Solar Activity Flatlines: Weakest solar cycle in 200 years

In March our supplier of energy was more inactive than in the previous months. The sunspot number was only 2,5, which is only 8% of what is normal for this month into the average cycle (month 112).Only solar cycles 5 and 6 were weaker.

A sunspot was detected only on 6 of 31 days.

Figure 1: The current solar cycle no. 24 (red) compared to the mean of the previous 23 recorded solar cycles (blue) and the similar solar cycle no. 5 (black).

An observation made on April 10, 2018, allowed us to say that at approximately 30° southern heliospheric latitude the SDO solar research satellite saw a tiny spot (it was too small to be officially counted as a sunspot) that certainly belonged to the next approaching solar cycle no. 25.

Sunspots are magnetic phenomena. The thermally conveyed plasma at the sun’s outer layer generates electric currents. Each of these currents produces a magnetic field. Depending on the direction of the current, the magnetic field is polarized and changes on the sun with each change of cycle.

The SDO instrument is able to determine the polarity of the magnetic field for each sunspot, and provided this image:

Figure 2: A magnetic image of the sun with the tiny spot showing the magnetic field polarity of solar cycle no. 25. Source. All spots of the still ongoing solar cycle no. 24 have opposite polarity: white section to the right and black to the left. The colors of the tiny cycle 25 spots are reversed.

Is that the end of cycle 24, some 20 months before the expected month no. 132?

Certainly not. And solar cycle 25 has yet to begin as more spots with the same SC 24 signature are still in the pipeline. Moreover solar cycle 24 could resemble the end of solar cycle 5, see Figure 1. In the months during a minimum, spots can appear that belong to the next cycle, as there is a transition phase where spots of both cycles appear.

The solar minimum has started

It can still take quite some time before the next cycle makes its debut. Whether the current solar cycle turns out to be both an especially weak one and a short one is still unknown. Historically weak solar cycles have lasted longer than strong ones, It is difficult to say if solar cycle 24 will be an exception. We’ll keep you up-to-date!

Next is a comparison of the deviation from the mean (112 months into the cycle) of all the solar cycles recorded thus far since the 18th century:

Figure 3: Comparison of the previous 24 solar cycles recorded since the 18th century. The current solar cycle no. 24 is the weakest in almost 200 years. Only two other cycles were weaker.

For estimating the strength of the upcoming cycle 25, we regularly cast a look at the sun’s polar fields. The current data are suggesting that solar cycle 25 will be similar to the current solar cycle 24. Thus we have to anticipate that the solar activity will not be returning to normal levels until at least 2031 – the year solar cycle 25 should end.

The good news is that it is highly improbable the sun will enter a Grand Minimum, such as the one that occurred from 1645 – 1715, the period known as the Little Ice Age.

The good news is that it is highly improbable the sun will enter a Grand Minimum, such as the one that occurred from 1645 – 1715, the period known as the Little Ice Age.
Sorry, but why would this be good? Rather bad, I would guess.

The thought is that the LIA corresponding with a Grand Minimum was not a coincidence.
Therefore, another Grand Minimum would also correspond with another LIA.
If that is highly probable to happen again it would be bad news. But it is highly improbable.
Fortunately.

M,
There will be another Grand Minimum. But I agree it’s unlikely to happen soon.
Based upon past cycles, the Modern Warm Period still has a good run left in it. Thank God.
But the longterm trend is down, so the next cool period and GSM are liable to be worse than the LIA and the Maunder GSM.
Let’s hope that by then humanity has nuclear fusion or some other advanced technology to compensate for the cold climate brought on by the spotless, cue ball sun.

lsvalgaard April 28, 2018 at 5:58 pm
Maybe you can’t, but I can look at the past as a guide to the future, and so can some of your colleagues. And by looking at other stars.
The fact is that during the Holocene and prior interglacials, even glacials, the same alternation between warmer and cooler cycles are associated with a more active and less active sun. In the Holocene, the Optimum was about 5000 years ago, the Egyptian Warm Period about 4000, the Minoan WP about 3000, the Roman WP about 2000 and the Medieval WP about 1000 years ago. Each warm interval was associated with a more active sun, and each intervening cool interval with a less active sun.
The LIA is a good example. The preceding Medieval WP enjoyed a more active sun. Then solar minima, to include the Maunder GSM during the depths of the LIA, became more frequent, and humanity suffered centuries of cold.
What’s past is prologue. I can’t say when the next GSM will occur, but odds are not for a long time. However your colleague, solar physicist Mark Giampapa, of the National Solar Observatory (NSO) in Tucson, Arizona, expects a neo-Maunder soon, because they happen up to 15% of the time.https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucedorminey/2014/01/20/sun-flatlining-into-grand-minimum-says-solar-physicist/#56f5dd4c18de

neo-Maunder soon, because they happen up to 15% of the time.
First of all, they don’t. That number is based on flawed data as most of stars were no ‘solar like’. And your ‘up to’ is a give-away, could be 2%, 10%, etc. They are all ‘up to’ 15%. Like in a sale: ‘up to 50% savings’.
And about the ‘soon’: if I flip a coin and no matter what the outcome is, I’ll predict that it ‘soon’ will be heads.
Totally vacuous.

@ M …look at the OOrt which arrives in the middle of the MWP, As a result of that GM occurring in the midst of a Warm Period the cooling effect of the GM is diminished, imo. So if we are about to see the next GM, then it is very likely that its cooling effect will also be minimized, as the Gm is starting from a higher base temp.

lsvalgaard Used to be someone I actually listened to and thought was highly qualified. I no longer feel that way. Something has changed in his demeanor that makes him sound more like a zealot than a scientist. Shame really.

lsvalgaard April 28, 2018 at 6:18 pm
Sad that late in your life and career you have become such a CACA tool.
The range for GSM percent isn’t two percent to 15%. It’s ten to 15%, as you’d know had you bothered to read the link or the literature.

lsvalgaard April 28, 2018 at 10:15 pm
Actually it was of stars in the sun’s class. But that is really less important than the fact that GSMs can be detected in Earth’s own climate history. Your d@nial of this fact naturally raises suspicions that you are (SNIPPED), with your colleagues who have suspiciously tried to rewrite the history of SSNs.
(Making personal attack like you did can get you into serious trouble, don’t do it anymore!) MOD

Actually it was of stars in the sun’s class
The Astronomical Journal, 128:1273–1278, 2004 September
DO WE KNOW OF ANY MAUNDER MINIMUM STARS?
J. T. Wright
“Most stars previously identified as Maunder minimum stars are old and evolved off the main sequence. Analysis of activity measurements from the California and Carnegie Planet Search program stars and Hipparcos parallaxes implies that the canonical relation between age and chromospheric activity breaks down for stars older than ~6 Gyr when activity is calculated from Mount Wilson S-values. Stars only 1 mag above the main sequence exhibit significantly suppressed activity levels, which have been mistaken for examples of Maunder minimum behavior.”

Lief,
Your 2004 link is old hat. The past 14 years of observations of sunlike stars shows it up for the obvious CACA special pleading that it was.
Mods,
No need to eject me. I’m happy to excuse myself from this antiscientific blog, which allows ignorant, arrogant megalomaniacs like Willis and tools like Leif free rein, while blocking real scientists.
WUWT richly deserves all the opprobrium that CACA acolytes spew upon it.
(You are entitled to post your opinion and beliefs on any topic, but NOT personal attacks) MOD

The probability of a grand minimum is low because the first quasi-sunspot of cycle 25 has already been observed. A grand minimum supposedly would be without an observable cycle 25. You are correct in doubting we know enough to be using “highly” probable/improbable nomenclature.

Chimp
April 28, 2018 at 11:32 pm:
Chimp, some of that needed saying, but please stick with us. The fact is, neither you nor Willis should be derogatory. Leif is more polite, and disagreement is normal. Needed even……Brett from NZ

Sorry Leif …. but …. no you do not know what is driving all of this. You r a good, maybe even great scientist, but as noted, just one experiment can disprove everything you think you have proven. The fact is a single detail could turn everything you think you know upside down. You know that that is how science works. The proper tools for studying solar science are relatively new, and given that solar science moves at a snails pace due to the long transition periods, there hasn’t been enough time to tease out how all this works. New tools could come into existence that invalidates everything we think we know. New and more valid interpretations of proxy readings can completely change the interpretation of the data.
Science, real science, does not strive to protect a particular perspective, but rather, it strives to disprove it, and in the process, validates it. You’ve done your part in challenging old perspectives, but you shouldn’t become defensive, saying “we know” when other scientist go about challenging yours.

New tools could come into existence that invalidates everything we think we know. New and more valid interpretations of proxy readings can completely change the interpretation of the data
Every bit of ‘theory’ or ‘knowledge’ has a ‘validity domain’. And knowledge gained will still be valid within its domain. Newton developed his theory of gravity and that is still valid to the accuracy of the time. Apples still fall from trees as Newton saw, regardless of Einstein.
What is important is how well we can use our knowledge to predict what will happen in the future. More than 50 years ago, Babcock and Leighton outlined how the solar cycle could work as an interplay between toroidal [east-west directed] and poloidal [north-south directed] magnetic fields. The cycle in their view would convert toroidal fields to poloidal fields and those poloidal fields would subsequently be converted to toroidal fields, completing the cycle. We observe that directly, both on the Sun and on other stars. This is very unlikely to be overthrown, and is in any case what we observe. Central to the theory is the notion that what is left over from the previous cycle is the ‘seed’ of the next cycle. We can directly observe the magnetic ‘debris’ of the previous cycle and also how it moves to the solar poles, from where it sinks into the interior to be amplified into the new cycle fields by application of known physics [Faraday’s law of induction].
So, by measuring the polar fields we can directly determine what the sun has to work with in generating the next cycle. We proposed 40 years ago that the polar fields therefore would be a good predictor of the size of the next cycle, and this has now held up for five cycles and we expect it to also hold up for the developing cycle 25. If it does not, we shall learn what other factors might influence the process. At this point in time, no other factor seems necessary, but in a sense, the next cycle will by important. It is a ‘do or die’ cycle. We also said that about cycle 24 which was predicted correctly.
The Sun is governed [we assert] by the same physical laws [Newton’s and Maxwell’s] and we apply those to the observed polar fields and plasma motions. If we do so, we find that they factually explain the evolution and size of the solar cycle for every cycle for which we have polar field data [the last five]. So we are justified in claiming that we know how this works, with the usual understanding that all knowledge can be amended as time passes based on new observations. But hard-won old knowledge usually is still valid and will not be overturned [the earth goes around sun, the earth is round, apples fall to the ground, the sun is magnetic, the sun and stars cycle their magnetic field between toroidal and poloidal modes, etc].

but you shouldn’t become defensive, saying “we know” when other scientist go about challenging yours
The current theory [what we ‘know’] for solar activity is not controversial and is not challenged by ‘other scientists’. Even though there will always be debate about the details of the process.

lsvalgaard April 29, 2018 at 7:44 am
“validity domain”
The concept carried by the expression “validity domain” is an idea I am pondering on for some time now. Although I was not aware of this expression itself. Googling it learns me it is mainly used in the physical sciences. My interest is more general in trying to identify different domains of mental activity, related to the various human social activities, like art, science, politics, religion… You may observe a dominating tendency stemming from specializing in one of these domains, in trying to stretch the boundaries too wide of your own familiar domain and crossing into others. Like a scientific oriented person brushing aside all religious belief or vice versa. Or a political fanatic too blind to see facts plainly visible for others. My naive idea being that maybe you can plot the main characteristics and mechanisms of these various “mental validity domains”. And if so as a consequence maybe avoid confusion stemming from using the same words and expressions over boundary lines, having different meaning and use within the various domains.
I guess you would need a universal “validity domain translator” for this, like the universal translator in Star Trek. Not an easy task, but who knows. Anyhow, a useful concept. Thanks, Leif.

When Dr S’s observations didn’t agree with what I had been led to think by earlier reading, I was disgruntled by it and it took some realization through checking citations that my own mindset was affected by confirmation bias. I have known too many souls with 130+ IQs to take any offense at Willis’s or Leif’s way of expressing themselves. It’s good to grow a thick skin in academia and particularly science, but introspection is the most advantageous growth process.

The LIA actually began circa 1315-1320, over 300 years preceding the Grand Minimum. The time frame you outlined is considered part of the coldest decades globally for the LIA, circa 1660-1700. The earth’s cooling began much earlier than the Maunder Minimum.

R. Shearer,
The current rise in temperature since the last LIA looks to be quite natural. Humans are a bit-part player in climate effect. Our changes in land usage play a much larger role than any CO2 we have exhausted into the atmosphere in slightly altering the climate.

Interesting question. For this kind of question, I do a “back of the envelope” calculation. Here’s how that works.
There are about 1.9 million km of paved road in the US plus about 76 thousand km of expressways. Assuming that the average road is maybe two lanes each way and a lane width of 3.6 metres, that’s about 28,000 square km.
On the expressways, assuming 3 lanes each way and the standard width of 3.75 metres, that’s another 1,700 square km. This gives us a total of 29,700 square km of road for the US.
Now, the area of the contiguous US is 7,663,941 square km. And this, in turn, means that the roads cover about 0.4% of the land area. Four-tenths of one percent.
So my guess would be that the roads don’t have much to do with it.
w.
PS—After running the numbers myself, I like to see what anyone else says. I find this:

The average width of a highway lane is 11 feet. This means roads cover 17,947 square miles of land, or just six-tenths of 1 percent of the total land area of the contiguous 48 states. Even if shoulders, driveways, and parking lots were added, the total would still be less than 1 percent of the nation’s land area.

They get a slightly larger number than I got, but it’s still far less than 1% of the US area.

A couple of comments Willis.
First, since the reference found a higher percentage with a lower area, they probably excluded areas covered by water from the total.
Secondly, I don’t think 0.4% is insignificant when we are talking about an area of high absorption of sunlight compared to the unpaved area. If for example the unpaved area averages 20% absorption while the paved area averages 80% absorption, the net effect is then 1.2% more sunlight absorbed. I believe that’s the same ballpark as a doubling of CO2.

While cool looking, the road map is very deceptive. It makes it look almost the entire US is paved. But the thickness of the road lines are necessarily EXTREMELY exaggerated at that “zoomed out” scale.

“Willis Eschenbach April 28, 2018 at 4:40 pm
Latitude April 28, 2018 at 3:08 pm
think all these roads might have something to do with it?
Interesting question. For this kind of question, I do a “back of the envelope” calculation. Here’s how that works.
…
They get a slightly larger number than I got, but it’s still far less than 1% of the US area.”

In spite of the envelope calculations, I can testify that during some summers in Las Vegas, one can feel themselves dehydrating while crossing one of their parking lots.
Only Death Valley and some ravines just outside of Death Valley beat those Las Vegas parking lots for generating heat from sunlight.
Well, the trilobite diggings in Antelope Springs area in Utah are equitable to LV’s parking lots. All that black slate and shale.

RE: Roads.
The 0.4 percent of paved surface is very likely to have some contribution. Remember that contrails were missing from the skies after 9/11 and that seemed to have quite a significant effect on temperature.

If we change the albedo of the country by 0.5%, and the increased energy is all radiated as blackbody, then the temperature should change by 0.12% to compensate. For an average temperature of 288 K, that works out to 0.36 K (C).

unknown502756: The warmer weather in the contiguous US on and during the few days after 9/11 was not due to lack of contrails. The lack of contrails during that nationwide warm spell was due to the terrorists planning their attack for a spell of nice weather when more people would be outdoors with their cameras, and early in that “nice weather window” they found an opportunity to follow through on one of their attack plans.
There is often a significant temperature anomaly for the whole contiguous US, and often that persists for a few days, sometimes much longer. That’s part of normal American weather. Normal American weather includes “acting normal” just enough to get Americans thinking that there is such a thing as “normal weather” in America.

Willis Eschenbach April 28, 2018 at 8:39 pm
In this case, true conservatism would mean relying not only on two lanes, but four or six.
Yet again, you [sic] methodology is found ludicrously wanting.

Four or six lanes as an average width for US roads? Have you lost it totally? That would indeed be ludicrous. In any case, it was a back-of-the-envelope calculation, not an attempt at total precision.
Look, Chimp, those that can, do; and those that can’t, well, they sit on the sidelines and endlessly criticize, carp, and whine. You are destroying your reputation with your foolish attacks on anything and everything that I say … dude, you are a sick stalker following me everywhere and trying unsuccessfully to bite my ankles. Go produce something yourself.
Javier writes posts and I respect him for it. I often disagree with him, but he’s willing to do the hard yards and put his ideas out there for people to take apart. That earns him props on my planet.
You, on the other hand, write childish, nasty attacks and I laugh at you for it.
w.

Willis,
Clearly you’ve never built a road, or it appears, driven on one. Practically all highways in the US are two lanes or more. You have city streets confused with roads.
It appears that you are not of this world.
[??? .mod]

Willis,
Clearly you’ve never built a road, or it appears, driven on one. Practically all highways in the US are two lanes or more. You have city streets confused with roads.
It appears that you are not of this world.

Ah, I see the problem. We’re talking past each other. You are referring to a road with one lane each way as a “two lane” road, while around here they call that a “one lane” road. So when I said a “two lane road” I meant a road with two lanes each way.
And on the basis of that misunderstanding you jumped to assumptions and roundly abused me … charming.
w.

What a mess…..it’s an artist rendering of roads…no one thinks all roads are the same size and miles wide
He didn’t do residential streets, parking lots, driveways, storage yards, airports, alleys, etc etc

Willis Eschenbach
April 28, 2018 at 4:40 pm : “Now, the area of the contiguous US is 7,663,941 square km. And this, in turn, means that the roads cover about 0.4% of the land area. Four-tenths of one percent.”
Interesting point that Latitude raised.
Somebody said the devil is in the detail…
Whilst all that roads make up 0.4% of the whole land area I wonder how much of the area around those pesky thermometers is it?
Btw, there was that Watt’s et all 2012 draft paper a bit around this idea 🙂

W,
Your calculation fails to account for weather station location relative to road location. Of course, the presence of roads often precedes albedo-altering structure building.
A more reliable indicator, would be to calculate road density per area. In large metro areas, these numbers would bulk quite large.

Lars, but that’s not all asphalt…..he only did roads….not residential streets, parking lots, etc
I would be willing to bet if you added asphalt and concrete, along with farming like noaap said…..you would find more global warming than they have measured.
Some study I read said they think they can lower Sidney’s temp by 44 degrees F….just by painting the roads white…..that sounds outrageous to me…..but still, that is also saying Sidney has at least 44 degrees F of UHI

Even IPCC says half the warming. Remember we didn’t have much impact until after about 1950. The world population was a third of what it is today. In 1900 it was a fifth and we had more than half that warming by the mid 30s-40s. Temperature dropped back down between then and and 1975 before turning up again – we were concerned about global cooling then (don’t believe the revision of history attempted by the campaigners). So it is a trivial truth that natural variability is, indeed a significant factor in temps – cooling us off after the 30s 40s high and assisting the warming in the 80s and 90s. The Pause was pretty well right on schedule.
We didn’t even have electric lights much before 1900 and much of the farmsteads in Saskatchewan were still using kerosene lamps in the 1950s. Horses still pulled bread, milk and ice-block delivery vans in the 1950s when I was a teenager and fewer than about 10% of people had a family car.
When I traveled to Europe in 1963, I could have flown, but I would have had to get to New York, stop to refuel in Reykyavik and then to Europe. I rode on a CN locomotive for free (arranged by my father a ‘hoghead’) from Winnipeg to Halifax where I boarded a Holland America passenger ship to Southhampton, England. Two years later, because of marriage, lack of cash, I took a job with the Geological Survey of Nigeria because they agreed that when my 3Yrs was up they would send us back to Canada. We sailed from Liverpool to Lagos, Nigeria. I hope this helps you visualize that we didn’t have the activity to warm much in those days. And I trust I have some authority with you having been born in the 1930s “high” which families talked about for over 40yrs afterwards. GY

W,
Your calculation fails to account for weather station location relative to road location. Of course, the presence of roads often precedes albedo-altering structure building.
A more reliable indicator, would be to calculate road density per area. In large metro areas, these numbers would bulk quite large.

Thanks, Rob. I was responding to a claim that the “current rise in temperature” was due to roads. If the claim had been regarding a rise in temperature READINGS I would have addressed that, and as you point out, that’s a whole other question.
Instead, I was looking at how much effect the roads would have on the actual temperature, not what the weather stations reported.
Regards,
w.

Willis, I had a min so I tried to find this out…
Your back of the envelope seems about half right……28,000 + 29,700 = 57,700 sq km
Internet says there’s somewhere between 61,000 and 65,000 sq miles…61000 is ~98,170 sq km of paved roads….not including residential, parking lots, airports, etc etc the usual disclaimer
That would make it about 0.8%, right??
I think Georgia is around 60,000 sq miles….so imagine the entire state of Georgia paved over

I am a cartographer. (And a S/W architect for the first PC GIS system.)
I also just returned from an adventure in rural SE Colorado, near the CO/Kansas/OK border.
I assure you:
1) According to the map, all of Kansas and much of eastern Colorado is covered with roads.
2) In reality, those are incredibly rural areas. There’s a paved road every 20-30 miles (at most)… and usually a dirt road about every mile. (Because land is divided into “sections” of 640 acres, approximately one mile square.
3) Clearly, the map shows every road, including dirt roads. Otherwise, you would more clearly see a lot of blank space in the area we just visited.
4) The uncolored areas are either major water features, or complete wilderness (mountains, desert, etc.)

Latitude April 28, 2018 at 3:08 pm
“think all these roads might have something to do with it?”
Brimfield Illinois I 74 overpass
East Peoria McCluggage east bridge ramp In the river valley of course
East Peoria I-74 / I-474 very large field in the middle of the interchange Best sited weather station aways from the bluff
Galesburg, IL overpass. on I-14 NE of city center

Interesting but tricky statistic. The large cooling event was due to a preceding fairly large warming event that I know you noticed.
It would be impressive if it instead had dropped that much from the average level of the last 5 years and stayed down. Not to knock it, it is a great observation in perspective.
We actually need a continuation of the current La Nina or a new La Nina to drop temperatures further than this back towards the pause to be dancing.
This is the same as the warmists cheering on an El Nino but never mind.

Because it has been suggested without any evidence, and we now have some evidence that says the opposte.
I have been saying for over a year that a grand solar minimum at this time is inconsistent with solar cycles. We are at a solar maximum.

Yes, the authors should have said “during the period known as the LIA”.
But the whole LIA does indeed correlate well with intervals of low SSN. Unlike the preceding Medieval and following Modern Warm Periods, the LIA was characterized by repeated solar minima, to include the prolonged Maunder GSM. Before the Maunder were the Wolf and Spörer Minima, separated by countertrend warming cycles, and it was followed, after another warming cycle, by the Dalton Minimum.
By contrast, the Modern Warm Period enjoyed the solar maximum from c. 1950 to 2009. It was weaker and shorter than the long Medieval Maximum, c. AD 1100 to 1250, but still better than cold.https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5c/Carbon14_with_activity_labels.svg/750px-Carbon14_with_activity_labels.svg.png

Also, I was not aware that we correct historical sunspot-number counts now. This seems suspect — I don’t mean as in dishonest, but as in “we really don’t know, and so we come up with a convincing way to make ourselves believe that our best guess is more correct than ever before.”

Thanks, Robert. The bad news is that if you are using outdated numbers that do not represent current thinking about sunspots, you may well come to incorrect conclusions. In passing, it also means that you haven’t kept up with current sunspot science … not a good look for someone writing about sunspots.
Regarding your other question, SILSO is the organization that curates the sunspot record. A while back it was recognized that there were errors made in earlier assembling of the sunspot data. After much analysis, including an examination of Wolf’s original telescope used to look for sunspots back in the day, the errors in the earlier numbers were corrected.
There’s a discussion of what was done here. If Leif Svalgaard shows up to comment I’m sure he’ll have better references, as he was involved in the process.
w.

Willis Eschenbach, paraphrasing… If we have not had an opportunity to robustly adjust the past, we are not able to scare you sufficiently with our bullshit. What was measured in the past always can be adjusted such that we can get any result we want. If we want it to appear as though the sun does not drive climate, we can simply adjust a few numbers, and suddenly the correlation that used to exist goes away. The sun has only had cycles for the last 300 to 400 years, before that, before anyone ever actually counted sunspots, you can trust that we found perfect proxies that indicate that the sun only came into these 100 year cycles the moment that someone starting looking at the spots and counting them. Before that, it was totally chaotic or something.
This is very similar to the unbelievably, in its truest sense, fact that all daily low temperatures that were measured before 1960 were all measured at the wrong time of the day. And all daily high temperatures were measured by people too short to properly read the thermostat and that means that it is OK that we lowered past temperature readings by a degree or so.

The have their old bogus data and it fits their story, so what if years of research show thye are wrong. They grabbed data, never checked for updates, and ran with it.
I do believe you are last true skeptic standing Willis

Mr. Eschenbach,
I was attempting to use subtle wordplay to make a pithy comment about the authoritarian nature of many of the alarmists.
I did not refute in any way the term that Mr. Mosher used for his self-description. Nor did I intend to label Mr. Mosher as an alarmist.
If you read his comment out loud, then read my comment out loud, the joke should become much more obvious.

Mr. Mosher,
I did not intend to label you as an “alarmist”.
However, some people are interpreting my comment as insinuating exactly that.
Therefore, I officially apologize to you for my unintentional gaffe.
Sorry – Pillage.

‘Is that the end of cycle 24, some 20 months before the expected month no. 132? Certainly not.’
I thought the definition of the end of a solar cycle was the first sign of the next one, so cycle 24 has ended.

Nope. You don’t have that correct. They smooth the monthly data with a box-car filter and pick the month with the lowest count, or if several zeros the central one. It requires that at least 5 months have passed since the actual minimum.
It could still be one or even two years away.

solar cycle 25 has yet to begin
There is this faux notion that solar activity is cyclic and that a new cycle begins when the old one ends. This is not correct [although people with cyclomania still are hung up on the strict cycle-idea].
Each ‘cycle’ [and there is nothing wrong in calling it a cycle as long as we know it is not. C.f. we still talk about ‘cosmic rays’ even though they are not ‘rays’] erupts [that is: ‘starts’ or ‘begins’] before the old one ends, so the two eruptions overlap by several years. For purely nomenclature reasons we chose the introduce arbitrary and artificial transitions from one ‘cycle’ to the next at the time where approximately there are as many ‘new’ cycle sunspots as old cycle spots.

Yes, we know how it works, but the thing is that for any practical effect, the location of the sunspots and their magnetic orientation (thus their belonging to a cycle) is irrelevant. Total solar irradiation, F10.6 flux, solar flares, and nearly everything that we can measure cycles with an average periodicity of 11.7 years. That’s why it is called the 11-year cycle. We will change from a cycle to the next when we get to the minimum, defined by the people that keep track of sunspots.

the thing is that for any practical effect
With one VERY important exception: To predict solar activity we must know how each individual eruption goes. We cannot get predictions by applying cycles which don’t really exist. And that is the important point when we begin to speculate about what the next ‘cycle’ will bring. The Sun doesn’t care about what “the people who keep track of sunspots” think.
Each individual eruption is the result of what only the previous one leaves behind. Already Waldmeier [in 1935] and Gleissberg [1943] knew this.

That can’t be true. Otherwise the 100-year cycle would not be possible.
In fact, there is no 100-yr cycle. There has been a ~100 year cycle the past 300-400 years, but that is easily explained as a simple stochastic effect. As I have explained to you so many times: The build-up of the polar fields that determine the size of the next eruption has a large random component as only a very small amount of dead-sunspot-magnetic-field makes it to the poles. It is like flipping a coin: you can easily get four heads in a row.A large eruption has more magnetic flux than a weak one, so the process that more flux to work with. So generally, we will have several large consecutive ‘cycles’ in a row, until by random luck less flux makes it to the poles and we get several successive small cycles, etc. This can be modeled and is well-understood.
Now, people affected with cyclomania will usually ignore our understanding of this, as we all know.

For the actual observational epoch [400 years] there has been a quasi-period of about 100 years rather than 60 years [or 85 years, or whatever]. The chance that a random fluctuation can break the sequence of [say] high eruptions must depend on fundamental properties of the sun, so it would not be a surprise to find a similar quasi-periods at other times in the past. But this is very different from assuming that there is a real cycle caused by some cyclic physical process.

For the actual observational epoch [400 years] there has been a quasi-period of about 100 years

Exactly. SC24 came right on schedule.
And we know from solar proxies that the same has happened for the past thousands of years.
Most people call that a cycle. You can call it what you want. I am not going to argue about a name.
The 100-year cycle is real and is in the data. Some measurements show it very clearly, like the Ap index.

Lol! When fishing, I usually catch a rock in every 25 or so, give or take, averaged over years, close enough for guvmnt work, etc…casts, which leads me to state there is a 25 cast cycle that is causing my rock catching episodes. And I can prove it with very little smoothing of the data, so it must be so. I will let the scientists figure out the exact mechanism, and if they don’t agree, they are just blinded by their biases.

“There has been a ~100 year cycle the past 300-400 years, but that is easily explained as a simple stochastic effect.”
But properly explained by the planetary ordering of sunspot cycles and solar minima.

‘Is that the end of cycle 24, some 20 months before the expected month no. 132? Certainly not.’

I thought the definition of the end of a solar cycle was the first sign of the next one, so cycle 24 has ended.

The cycles overlap at the minima. The new cycle is determined by the polarity of the spots. At the minimum, there are both old spots from the previous cycle, and new, different-polarity spots from the new cycle.
w.

In March our supplier of energy was more inactive than in the previous months. The sunspot number was only 2,5, which is only 8% of what is normal for this month into the average cycle (month 112).Only solar cycles 5 and 6 were weaker.

You are implying that “sunspot number” has something to do with the sun’s supply of energy. The term “solar activity” as used by solar scientists is used to refer to the sun’s magnetic, which is driven by the solar dynamo. This a a different process from the sun’s thermonuclear process, which provides the energy which warms the Earth.
For example, solar activity vanishes every 11 years or so. Yet there is no clear signal of this cycle in the climate temperature records.

Slight correction, for clarity, you mean the Sun’s “output” of energy. Sunspots have no apparent effect on the amount of energy contained within the star we affectionately call Sol. Or perhaps they do!?!? I bet you could get Uncle Sugar to give you a weighty grant to research that one.

Again, your chart implies that sunspots have a lot of correlation to the suns’s energy output. In reality, this correspondence is virtually negligible (~0.1%) in the sense that it generates no clear 11-year signal in climate data (in spite of all the hand-waving and speculation among the “It’s the Sun!” crowd).
Not surprising. This 1-watt change in TSI induced by solar magnetic activity is dwarfed by the change in TSI induced by eccentricity in the Earth’s orbit, which varies by 5 million kilometers from aphelion to perihelion. The orbital TSI change is on the order of 100-watts!
Ironically, this 100-watt signal is normalized out of final TSI calculation, which makes the sunspot contribution seem to dominate. (But only if your Y-scale is restricted to 1365 to 1367 wm2.)
😐

@Johanus, The problem isn’t the minimal signal from TSI in the record, it’s the focus on TSI as if that would be the only way for solar changes to effect Earth’s temperature, due to the outdated assumption that solar output at different wavelengths changed consistently with TSI.
The effect of CO2 is bounded by it’s absorption spectrum, so too the effect of the sun depends on changes in output at the wavelengths that pass through the atmosphere. Additional CO2 has limited effect because of the saturation in absorption spectrum, and TSI could theoretically go up by 10% without causing any significant change in temperature if it only increased at wavelengths that were already blocked by the atmosphere. Alternatively, if increases along the wavelengths that affect Earth the most were balanced by decreases on other wavelengths, there could be significant warming with no change at all in TSI.
There is little over a decade of data from NASA’s SORCE satellite, the first to take readings of solar output at different wavelengths on a daily basis. It has already shown that output at some wavelengths vary much more than others, and that output at some wavelengths will go the opposite direction of TSI. There just isn’t enough data to tell how much variation exists over a time span of decades.

Willis, i was wondering if fourier was actually done there on smoothed data. It would have had to have been smoothed just so the cycling would clearly show up in such a graph as the one on the left. (with the fourier no need to smooth the data and the indication that it was smoothed is lacking) Battery dead, gotta go…

Alan,
CO2 is not a repository of energy. It is a converter. It can convert IR to heat and heat to IR.
The heat is stored in the overall atmosphere which is why a thermometer can actually measure it.
Note that in the stratosphere the more CO2 the cooler the atmosphere. You have to do statistical mechanics analysis at the molecular level to figure out if adding CO2 warms or cools.

Javier April 28, 2018 at 3:25 pm
Not that I consider HadCRU fit for any scientific purpose, but if its 11-year cycles are indeed valid in the real physical world, then a possible explanation is lag. Oceans are still giving off heat accumulated over the previous 11 and 22 years, even as the current solar cycle might be weaker.

Again, your chart implies that sunspots have a lot of correlation to the suns’s energy output. In reality, this correspondence is virtually negligible (~0.1%) in the sense that it generates no clear 11-year signal in climate data

The chart doesn’t imply anything. It is clearly labelled. The correlation is well known and the signal has been identified multiple times. It amounts to ± 0.1-0.2 °C. Whether it is negligible or not is a subjective opinion. It is included in every weather and climate model, so generally it is not considered negligible.

Since we have several iterations of the solar cycle in the data, the statistics have been worked out by several authors. All the results agree that the effect is small, and are consistent with the radiative forcing change at the top of the atmosphere, so nobody has a problem with the result.

@Ted “due to the outdated assumption that solar output at different wavelengths changed consistently with TSI.”
Who made that claim? We’ve known about variations in SSI for a long time. EUV emission increases with solar activity and causes clear and consistent changes in ionospheric RF propagation, for example. But such changes have not been observed clearly and consistently in the climate record.

[I misplaced this reply earlier, below]
@Ted “due to the outdated assumption that solar output at different wavelengths changed consistently with TSI.”
Who made that ‘outdated’ claim? We’ve known about variations in SSI for a long time. EUV emission increases with solar activity and causes clear and consistent periodic (~11yrs) changes in ionospheric RF propagation, for example. But such changes have not been observed clearly and consistently in the climate record.

So, its a “yes&no” sorta proposition, neither fish nor fowl and certainly not beef. They have put a foot down on every side of the issue. Quite masterful, to say the least. And here we are, cold and damp at the end of April, and yet it does not mean anything its just the weather. Perhaps they could check and see if Guam has capsized from too many people yet, seems they got time on their hands.

Very late April in tornado alley.
There’s a slight chance of an outbreak of tornadoes by the end of next week in Oklahoma, but then after that there’s little chance of a significant outbreak in the southern part of tornado alley until the third week of May or later. This is surprising to me.
This could change very quickly due to the accumulation of small perturbations during the rapidly changing springtime dynamics with the returning Sun, but such a fluke hasn’t happened in a long time.

Here in western PA many farmers are holding off planting, others have rolled the dice and put some crops in, looking at lows tonight in the 20s, this morning we had 28 here in Butler County.
Tornado alley is rather calm, my years in Oklahoma and Texas make me worry how bad it will get once the southern flow gets in high gear, what with the cold air flow still looking to persist into June.

“Willful ignorance” is Leif’s favorite defense against people who don’t want to take his arrogant opinions at face value. Asked to prove his stance, Leif resorts to self-references, painful explanations of the obvious that have nothing to do with the question askes, and more arrogant words. I agree with those who conclude that Leif is not a real scientist any more.

“Willful ignorance” is Leif’s favorite defense against people who don’t want to take his arrogant opinions at face value. Asked to prove his stance, Leif resorts to self-references, painful explanations of the obvious that have nothing to do with the question askes, and more arrogant words. I agree with those who conclude that Leif is not a real scientist any more.

Let’s review the bidding. Some charming fellow named J. Hope said, without provocation:

And we haven’t heard from Lief, AKA as Lord Kelvin, either Timo! I wait with bated breath to hear what our very own solar expert has to say. Not!

Most unpleasant. In response, Leif said, in much milder tones than I would have used:

Willful ignorance is a mark of intellectual dishonesty.

Since Leif had not yet contributed to the conversation, Mr. Hope’s comment was indeed willfully ignorant …
Now you come along to further accuse Leif, without providing a single actual example of what has your panties in such a twist, and to sanctimoniously pronounce that Leif is not a “real scientist” …
Really? You know this how? I assume that it is your extensive knowledge of solar physics that entitles you to pass that judgment on Leif, correct?
Alexander, let me offer you a rule of thumb that has served me well:

Be very careful when disagreeing with a scientist who has an effect named after him in the field you are discussing …

Some people think the Sun never changes.
Does it or not?
There is certainly an 11 year cycle, up and down, This can be extended to 2 cycles. .Then it was obviously at a different level in the Maunder Minimum. Then it has a long cycle as a main sequence star fusing hydrogen into helium, helium into heavier elements. Then it takes 200,000 years for energy generated in the core to be emitted at its surface at the level of 63,240,000 watts/m2.
It is not a 100.0000% stable ball of gas.

OK…Take your pick –
Q: Do you know the punishment for bigamy?
A: Two mothers-in-law.
A man returned home from the night shift and went straight up to the bedroom. He found his wife with the sheet pulled over her head, fast asleep. Not to be denied, the horny husband crawled under the sheet and proceeded to make love to her.
Afterward, as he hurried downstairs for something to eat, he was startled to find breakfast on the table and his wife pouring coffee. “How’d you get down here so fast?” he asked. “We were just making love!” “Oh my God,” his wife gasped, “That’s my mother up there! She came over early and had complained of having a headache. I told her to lie down for a while.”
Rushing upstairs, the wife ran to the bedroom. “Mother, I can’t believe this happened. Why didn’t you say something?” The mother-in-law huffed, “I haven’t spoken to that jerk for fifteen years, and I wasn’t about to start now!”
Q: What should you do if you see your Mother-In-Law rolling around in pain on the ground?
A: Shoot her again
The definition of mixed emotions – seeing your mother-in-law drive over the cliff in your new car.
One cannibal says to the other: “I can’t stand my mother-in-law.”
The other says: “Why don’t you just eat the vegetables?”

Dear Willis,
You should have realized that the bonus graph is not from the authors – whoever added it to our original post. In this case you are a sacrifice of your own strawman fallacy. When it comes to solar influence on climate , you switch to a tunnel view.
The original post is on http://www.kaltesonne.de from 24 th of April.
Prof. Vahrenholt

Fritz, thanks for this clarification. I’m the other author of the post and it was nothing else than an objective report about the state of the solar activity in march 2018. And the sentence in question ( LIA, Mounder) in the original post was in that way:” A great minimum as it was observed 1645-1715 ( Maunder Minimum during the LIA) is very unlikely”. This is correct in any meaning. We never made an attribution or a valuation like “The good news…”. The absolutely correctly meaning was “lost in translation” IMO.

It doesn’t matter. Some people here hate the idea that solar variability might have anything to do with climate change so much that they lose all objectivity. Unfair personal attacks are the norm to anybody that proposes it.

Far more (here anyway) hate the idea that apart from the fact that “solar variability” is a piddling 0.1% over 11 years… it currently shows an inverse correlation to global average temperature.
But it makes for great clickbait.

Well yes, but if you stay with TSI you miss the chance to see things like this:https://i.imgur.com/uVotN0L.png
Or to explain why this year the polar vortex was so weak and disorganized and we had such a miserable winter over the NH.

Overall TSI changes as a whole have very little to do with the overall temperature change of the globe.
It is instead the changes in EUV light and UV light and Near UV light(that part of TSI) that govern the atmospheric circulation patterns and the overall sea surface temperatures.
Then the other solar factors are the strength of the solar wind and the AP index which are tied to global cloud cover(galactic cosmic rays) and major explosive volcanic activity not to mention overall snow coverage which in turn will influence the earth’s albedo.
Given alL the above and given where we are with the state of the sun; the global overall sea surface temperature drop and overall surface temperature drop is in the 1st inning , we have a long way to go and this year is the transitional year.
The global temperatures have not changed much over the past several years , but I expect this will soon be changing and that change will be to the downside.
I expect weak solar conditions to continue as we move forward and the other factor which everybody ignores probably because they do not understand it’s role in the climate, is the earth’s geo magnetic field , which is now weakening rapidly and will compound given solar effects.
The next several years as far as the climate goes will be telling.

“Overall TSI changes as a whole have very little to do with the overall temperature change of the globe.”
The ocean is responding now to TSI as it did during the SC24 maximum.https://www.dropbox.com/s/zignba1x4byxb1p/2017-18%20Eq%20Upper%20Ocean%20Heat%20%26%20TSI.JPG?dl=0https://www.dropbox.com/s/iokvwthjw78iuk6/55m%20responds%20to%20daily%20TSI.JPG?dl=0
“It is instead the changes in EUV light and UV light and Near UV light (that part of TSI) that govern the atmospheric circulation patterns and the overall sea surface temperatures.”
No. Overall TSI does this via solar radiation absorption at depth converted to sensible heat that upwells, heating the air that then rises and becomes “the wind”. UV is a very small part of the spectrum and effects the upper atmosphere first, and if you have evidence of it working on the ocean let’s see it.
There will be about a 0.1 to 0.18C drop from the change in TSI at most in HadSST3 in annual numbers before the next cycle, described here.
The climate is working now exactly as I have prescribed for the past 4 years.
TSI-insolation drives the climate.

What drives the climate are the strength of the solar/geo magnetic fields. When in tandem they compliment one another as is the case now both are weakening and that is what drives the climate not the ultra small TSI changes..

“Time will tell but I disagree with your premise that it is overall TSI that drives the climate.
This ‘time will tell’ thing is unneccessary, as time has already told over the past four years of confirmation.
Can you tell me why you disagree with my premise after I”ve presented the evidence that it does?
You expected people for years and years to understand all of your several thresholds without explanation, without evidence, without testing, or any visible validation, all the while you proclaim the sun drives the climate, yet when shown how the real threshold was established, how it was tested and validated, you respond in less than one hour. I doubt you could have read and understood my poster in 45 minutes.
Prove me wrong. What is the exact reason you disagree with my premise? What part?
If you don’t answer me and can’t come back against me later with a very specific reason why you disagree, well I don’t have to tell how stupid that would look.

“What drives the climate are the strength of the solar/geo magnetic fields. When in tandem they compliment one another as is the case now both are weakening and that is what drives the climate not the ultra small TSI changes..”
I’m very sorry Salvatore, but you don’t know what you’re talking about here. This is your style to deny one thing and present another backed with nothing but your opinion. Very typical.

Is there evidence of an 11 year modulation in the temperature records ?

Yes, it has been measured several times and it is generally accepted. For example:
Camp, C. D., & Tung, K. K. (2007). Surface warming by the solar cycle as revealed by the composite mean difference projection. Geophysical Research Letters, 34(14).http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2007GL030207/full“By projecting surface temperature data (1959 – 2004) onto the spatial structure obtained objectively from the composite mean difference between solar max and solar min years, we obtain a global warming signal of almost 0.2°K attributable to the 11-year solar cycle. The statistical significance of such a globally coherent solar response at the surface is established for the first time.”

and it is generally accepted
That a 0.1% variation of TSI changes the temperature by 0.07 degrees is accepted and expected, but not well determined as the effect is in the noise. Any larger effect is not generally accepted.

“That a 0.1% variation of TSI changes the temperature by 0.07 degrees is accepted and expected, but not well determined as the effect is in the noise.”
I found a nominal solar sensitivity rate of 0.5°C/W/yr, that varied with a multi-month TSI trend.
A 0.1% variation of 1360.5 is 1.36. 0.07°C/1.36W =0.051°C/W, 10X lower than mine, no wonder it’s considered in the noise! Methinks the generally accepted view is off again.
Min to max temperature, SC24 raised HadSST3 by 0.355°C (yearly data), 0.488°C (monthly), and a maximum monthly change of 0.596°C from 1-2008 to 1-2016. Solar energy absorbed by the ocean is incrementally cumulative.https://www.dropbox.com/s/q90g7bwdukkhud5/Figure%2016%20SC24%20v%20SST.JPG?dl=0

The solar ‘sensitivity’ is given by Stefan-Boltzmann’s law that can be expressed like this: dT/T = dS/S/4 because radiation S is proportional to temperature T to the forth power [hence the division by 4]. So the sensitivity is dT/dS = T/(4*1361) = 0.05 K/(W/m2).

About that S-B.
One would think that in realtime the instantaneous clear-sky solar input should be the full TSI value used, not the daily average.
Think of it this way, Willis’ daily thunderstorm work depends on the instantaneous solar input in the morning, not the daily average value.

should be the full TSI value used
I used 1361. The divisor of 4 is not from the earth being round, etc, but comes from the fact that S = a T^4, so that dS = a (4 T^3 dT) = 4 a T^4 dT/T = 4 S dT/T so that (dS/S)/4 = dT/T or dT/dS = T/(4S). T is 288 K global average, S = 1361 W/m^2, so dT/dS = 288/(4 * 1361) = 0.05 K/(W/m^2).

Is there evidence of an 11 year modulation in the temperature records ?

Yes, it has been measured several times and it is generally accepted. For example:
Camp, C. D., & Tung, K. K. (2007). Surface warming by the solar cycle as revealed by the composite mean difference projection. Geophysical Research Letters, 34(14).http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2007GL030207/full
“By projecting surface temperature data (1959 – 2004) onto the spatial structure obtained objectively from the composite mean difference between solar max and solar min years, we obtain a global warming signal of almost 0.2°K attributable to the 11-year solar cycle. The statistical significance of such a globally coherent solar response at the surface is established for the first time.”

Javier, without reading more than the introduction, I can see problems with the paper.
• The paper uses the totally outdated and discredited Lean 1995 TSI reconstruction, which even Lean has disavowed. She revised it in 2000, and again in 2002, and it still had problems, viz:

Even GISS acknowledges the problems with the use of the Lean et al data in the Hansen et al (2007) paper “Climate simulations for 1880-2003 with GISS modelE”. They state, “Lean et al. (2002) call into question the long-term solar irradiance changes, such as those of Lean (2000), which have been used in many climate model studies including our present simulations. The basis for questioning the previously inferred long-term changes is the realization that secular increases in cosmogenic and geomagnetic proxies of solar activity do not necessarily imply equivalent secular trends of solar irradiance.”

• Next, they are only using a small subset of the available temperature and TSI data, from 1959 to 2004. The TSI reconstructions go back to 1700 and the temperature reanalysis “data” goes back to 1948. Whenever someone does that it raises questions.
• Next, they are using what is laughably called “reanalysis data”, which is not data at all. It is the output of the same computer models that have fared so poorly in forecasting the future … except these models are continually “nudged” to keep them from going off of the rails.
These computer models have several huge failings. First, they are NOT founded on “basic physics” as is often claimed. We know this because models with wildly differing inputs (forcings) are nonetheless able to do a reasonable job “hindcasting” the global average temperature. If they were truly physics-based, this would not be possible.
Second, the global temperature outputs of such models are basically lagged and scaled versions of their inputs. This is far, far more linear than the real world.
Third, in general, they are nowhere near as damped as reality is. As a result, you can see echoes of whatever you choose to enter as input coming out in the output … but the world doesn’t work like that. This is crucial in e.g. analyses of the putative effect of the sunspot cycle on climate. Many times you can see echoes of the sunspot cycle in reanalysis model output … but the same is not true when we look at the real world observations for the same variable.
For another view on reanalysis climate models, here’s Pat Frank on the subject:

I think all reanalysis is indeed unreliable. The reason is that no climate model deploys a valid theory of climate.
Even where reanalysis is of the known climate, for which the model has been parameterized to reproduce certain observables, the uncertainty remains in the reanalysis because the parameters merely are tuned to have offsetting errors. Other sets of parameters, reflecting different physical relationships, will reproduce the same set of observables.
That is, the underlying physical theory is incomplete or wrong or both, no matter whether the tuned parameters reproduce known observables, or not. Therefore large uncertainties remain in the calculational product. The uncertainties are merely hidden because of the parameter tuning.
No one in the modeling community seems to pay attention to these absolutely critical details of scientific rigor. By excluding proper physical error analysis, climate modelers are claiming to know what they manifestly do not.

Couldn’t say it better myself.
One final point. Computers don’t do edges very well. If you have a chunk of the ocean L1 at a temperature T1 and a location L2 some ways away at a temperature T2, in the absence of other information, the computer will assume a steady change in temperature from L1 to L2.
However, nature doesn’t do gradual. Instead, it usually does edges. Either you are in a cumulus cloud or out of it, there is no miles and miles of gradual decrease in cloud.
And I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen at sea that the ocean temperature doesn’t vary for dozens of miles, and then it suddenly changes by a couple of degrees. As the poet had it, nature is “dappled”, while computers … well, they’re not.
Which is why analyses using reanalysis “data” are likely to find bogus correlations between solar activity and temperature …
• Then they say ” the observed correlation of the spatially filtered surface temperature with the 11‐year solar cycle is statistically significant at 99.8% confidence level.” … oh, please. There’s far too much noise in the system for two such disparate datasets to correlate with a p-value of 0.002. That’s simply not believable, it indicates that there is something wrong with their methods.
• Finally, Judith Lean’s and all such early TSI reconstructions have been overturned by the realization that the early sunspot data was not treated properly, and the subsequent correction of those errors by SILSO.
So no … that paper is not “generally accepted” except by the solar true believers such as yourself. It has huge problems.
For those interested in the question, there is an overview of the various TSI reconstructions here (Excel spreadsheet).
w.

Leif, thanks, I stand corrected as I was apparently thinking of something else, and don’t use it and haven’t seen it for a while.
I’ll see how S-B and my empirical work can be reconciled; it’ll take some time to work on.

Bob Weber
April 28, 2018 at 3:13 pm “TSI-insolation drives the climate.”
Whilst that may be true on a centuries/millennia timeline, I would think that in geological timeline the shape of the continents and the ocean currents are main drivers.

And we are told, repeatedly, by our friendly [population aim – 750 million] neighbourhood watermelons, that the science is settled.
Nothing to see.
Move on.
This thread alone, to me, suggests that not everything that could be known about the Sun is, in fact known, and generally accepted.
My take is that much of atmospheric science is in a similar position – we might ‘know’ the right answers, perhaps, but we may not accept/know that we do.
Auto – enthralled! –

Why cant we sue all the education departments for teaching that there are more extreme weather events because of AGW? We may not be able to sue them for teaching the junk science of CAGW but at least we can point to all the databases on extreme weather events.

TSI changes are to small to change the climate by themselves it is that simple Bob.
In addition global temperatures have yet to drop despite what you have been claiming.
It is the magnetic field strengths that determine the climate.
But you are entitled to your opinion.

@Salvatore- said 1. TSI changes are to small to change the climate by themselves it is that simple Bob.
*I believe this reference to Karin Labitzke’s work shows an undeniable solar connection to climate and weather.
Exerpt from Javier …
In a series of seminal articles Karin Labitzke with Harry van Loon (1987; 2006) established that the QBO modulates the effect of solar activity on the stratosphere and the Polar Vortex. With great insight Labitzke, who was aware of the state of the solar 11-year cycle through time, unlocked a problem that had occupied researchers for centuries when she decided to segregate the data on stratospheric polar temperatures according to QBO phase (Kerr, 1987; figure 96). The very low correlation when all the data is considered, becomes very high using the segregated data, and Labitzke became the first to identify a strong sunspot-weather correlation.https://judithcurry.com/2018/01/21/nature-unbound-vii-climate-change-mechanisms/
And …
2. In addition global temperatures have yet to drop despite what you have been claiming.
*This is an excerpt from an essay allegedly by James delingpole posted on Breitbart …
The 2016-18 Big Chill was composed of two Little Chills, the biggest five month drop ever (February to June 2016) and the fourth biggest (February to June 2017). A similar event from February to June 2018 would bring global average temperatures below the 1980s average. February 2018 was colder than February 1998.
From February 2016 to February 2018 (the latest month available) global average temperatures dropped 0.56°C. You have to go back to 1982-84 for the next biggest two-year drop, 0.47°C—also during the global warming era. All the data in this essay come from GISTEMP Team, 2018: GISS Surface Temperature Analysis (GISTEMP). NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (dataset accessed 2018-04-11)
Was this EVER mentioned in MsM?
And …
3. It is the magnetic field strengths that determine the climate.
*Can you please give a published reference for this claim?
Sandy, Minister of Future

That’s what complicates it for me, too. Are we to assume Sol’s “magnetic field strengths”, or the IMF? What then is the mechanism by which whatever magnetic field is responsible controls weather, and in the long run climate?

Are we to assume Sol’s “magnetic field strengths”, or the IMF
Although I don’t believe that the magnetic field per se has any effect, it would be the IMF [the solar field brought out to us by the solar wind] that might be involved as the IMF and the Geomagnetic field are connected, as I showed back in 1968. Particles can then travel from one medium to the other and electric currents can be induced.

“[1]TSI changes are to small to change the climate by themselves it is that simple Bob.
[2]In addition global temperatures have yet to drop despite what you have been claiming.
[3]It is the magnetic field strengths that determine the climate.”
1. False, as I’ve already demonstrated and true to form you simply refute w/o evidence.
2. False. The ONLY temperature metric I use in my TSI method is HadSST3, and it has fallen from 0.613C in 2016 to 0.504 in 2017, and the latest monthly data is at 0.416C. That is a cooling, a reduction in temperature.
Where have you been? The last 2 years had a very significant temperature drop.
3. It is the magnetic field strengths that determine the climate. Yes, the sun’s magnetic field.

“The large 2-year TSI drop 2016-17 is responsible for the large temperature drop since then.
Bob says which is false. There has been no large temperature drop as far as the data I use.”
You just took what I said and completely reversed it then reattributed it to me.
Now I know you’re just trolling me. I doubt you know how to input data into a spreadsheet.

Since there is not graph of the x-axis is sunspots and the y-axis is global mean temperature, how do you know sunspots are correlated to temperature? Overlaying a cycle of sunspots and a cycle of temperature means nothing statistically.

I value Willis’ input…
What does Willis say about the Maunder Minimum and sunspot totals? I know he doesn’t see any 11 year temperature influence by sunspot totals/cycles, but I’m not sure about how he “feels” about the Maunder Minimum and the “little Ice Age temps…Maybe he has addressed that, but I can’t recall it…

We do have tons of anecdotal evidence.
such as:
“The Great Frost, as it was known in England, or Le Grand Hiver (“The Great Winter”), as it was known in France, was an extraordinarily cold winter in Europe in late 1708 and early 1709,[1] and was the coldest European winter during the past 500 years.”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Frost_of_1709

“The Great Frost, as it was known in England, or Le Grand Hiver (“The Great Winter”), as it was known in France, was an extraordinarily cold winter in Europe in late 1708 and early 1709,[1] and was the coldest European winter during the past 500 years.”

a) Wikipedia
b) Anyone who claims it was the coldest “during the past 500 years” is blowing smoke. We do NOT have data on 500 winters in Europe.
And that’s why the plural of “anecdote” is not “data” …
w.

That’s hilarious. First, “EVERY scientific study of climatic history” recognizes it??? You’ve read every single one, and each and every one mentions it? Wild exaggeration is not your friend, Chimp …
Second, National Geographic Magazine, which is wildly climate alarmist, is your sole example of a “scientific study”? Hilarious.
In any case, I’ll be happy to believe it was the coldest winter in 500 years as soon as you link to some study that gives us the actual winter temperatures in England for every single year for the last 500 years. That’s starting in 1518 … I await your link. And if you can’t produce such a link, I hope (but doubt) that you’ll have the huevos to admit that we don’t know if it was the coldest winter in five hundred years …

It was off the scale, and could only have happened in a world already suffering from the depths of a solar grand minimum.

Even the National Geographic says that “to this day, there is no conclusive theory for its cause.” Clearly you know the cause, you should get in touch with NatGeo and straighten them out …

Your naive, simple, blind faith yet again blinds you to reality.

Here’s some reality. This is the famous climatologist Hubert Lamb’s England winter severity index, along with the putative solar minima …https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/lamb-england-winter-index-w-dates.jpgH.H. Lamb’s England winter severity index, 1100-1950, overlaid with the actual dates of the four solar minima ascribed to that period. Values are decadal averages 1100-1110,1110-1120, etc., and are centered on the decade.
Note that, contrary to your claim, the year 1709 is NOT in a period “suffering from the depths of a solar grand minimum”. According to Lamb, although the preceding decade was cold, the decade 1700-1710 was about average …
Note also that from the start of the Maunder Minimum winter temperatures were warming … go figure.
Summary: Was it unusually cold in January to March of 1709? Absolutely. It was the dawn of thermometers, and it was damn cold. There’s a good description here … which makes no mention of “coldest in 500 years”.
Was it during a general period of extreme cold? Not according to Hubert Lamb.
Was it the coldest winter in 500 years? Nobody knows, because we simply don’t have records going that far back.
w.

Willis,
While a thermometer reading isn’t a great measure of weather, it so happens that written records corroborating ice extent, depth of frozen soil, exploding trees, etc, represent pretty good proxies for the extent and duration of low temperatures. At some point you have to accept that the reports are more than anecdotal.
In fact, Chimp was essentially correct about the consensus view of that winter, and would have been entirely correct if he had said instead, “it is generally recognized based on the records of the day that it was the coldest winter in 500 years”, or something like it.
You must have gone to quite some effort to find a blog that doesn’t say something similar.
=====
1709: The year that Europe froze
New Scientist
People across Europe awoke on 6 January 1709 to find the temperature had plummeted. A three-week freeze was followed by a brief thaw – and then the mercury plunged again and stayed there. From Scandinavia in the north to Italy in the south, and from Russia in the east to the west coast of France, everything turned to ice. The sea froze. Lakes and rivers froze, and the soil froze to a depth of a metre or more. Livestock died from cold in their barns, chicken’s combs froze and fell off, trees exploded and travellers froze to death on the roads. It was the coldest winter in 500 years.
IN ENGLAND they called the winter of 1709 the Great Frost. In France it entered legend as Le Grand Hiver, three months of deadly cold that ushered in a year of famine and food riots. In Scandinavia the Baltic froze so thoroughly that people could walk across the ice as late as April. In Switzerland hungry wolves crept into villages. Venetians skidded across their frozen lagoon, while off Italy’s west coast, sailors aboard English men-of-war died from the cold. “I believe the Frost was greater (if not more universal also) than any other within the Memory of Man,” wrote William Derham, one of England’s most meticulous meteorological observers. He was right. Three hundred years on, it holds the record as the coldest European winter of the past half-millennium.https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126942-100-1709-the-year-that-europe-froze/
=====
One is forced to wonder if you perhaps think ice ages didn’t occur until the thermometer was invented to record them.

Willis,
While a thermometer reading isn’t a great measure of weather, it so happens that written records corroborating ice extent, depth of frozen soil, exploding trees, etc, represent pretty good proxies for the extent and duration of low temperatures. At some point you have to accept that the reports are more than anecdotal.

I agreed with Chimp on this question. I said:

Summary: Was it unusually cold in January to March of 1709? Absolutely. It was the dawn of thermometers, and it was damn cold. There’s a good description here … which makes no mention of “coldest in 500 years”.

So I have no clue what you are arguing for or against.

In fact, Chimp was essentially correct about the consensus view of that winter, and would have been entirely correct if he had said instead, “it is generally recognized based on the records of the day that it was the coldest winter in 500 years”, or something like it.
You must have gone to quite some effort to find a blog that doesn’t say something similar.

I have no respect at all for the “consensus view”, as it has been wrong so many times in the past. As Michael Crichton said, If you want to be a sheep, be my guest. Me, I like to actually look at the facts. See my post “Missing The Missing Summer” for an example. Here’s Michael Crichton on the subject:

I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled.
Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had.
Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.
There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period.

One is forced to wonder if you perhaps think ice ages didn’t occur until the thermometer was invented to record them.

Say what? We think the ice ages occurred because we have a host of proxy records (e.g. ice cores) and geological evidence (e.g. moraines) for them.
As far as I know, we have exactly zero proxy records or geological evidence for the winter of 1709. Surely you can see the difference, even without a consensus …
w.

Willis,
The timing of the cherry trees in Japan has been closely monitored for a thousand years.
Page 10 of http://www.leif.org/research/Climate-Change-My-View.pdf has something on that.
The conclusion was:
“There were occasionally very cold years, as indicated by late flowering years, but on the whole this was the warmest average period. From 1400 to the mid 1500s, temperatures were variable, but they appear to have declined slightly on average. Certain decades, both before and after 1600, were noticeably warmer. In the following centuries, temperatures generally declined to 6°C, with particularly low temperatures in the periods from 1690 to the 1710s, and from 1810 to the 1830s, e.g. the year without a summer, 1816, likely caused by the massive 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia. The recent rise of temperatures is attributed, primarily to the warming associated with the urbanization of the Kyoto area (estimated to be of the order of 3°C), and secondarily with the general global climate warming of Japan.”

Willis,
The timing of the cherry trees in Japan has been closely monitored for a thousand years.
Page 10 of http://www.leif.org/research/Climate-Change-My-View.pdf has something on that.
The conclusion was:
“There were occasionally very cold years, as indicated by late flowering years, …”

Thanks, Leif. The problem with that conclusion is that it makes a simplistic equivalence between temperature and flowering date. In fact, the relationship is much more complex, viz:

Briefly, the model used in the present study divides the flowering process of deciduous trees into two stages: dormancy including rest and quiescent periods during autumn and winter, and the flowering period following bud-burst in spring (Fig. 1).
The model requires the date in autumn when temperature falls below a threshold temperature, causing floral buds to enter the rest period of dormancy, and an estimation of three parameters.
The threshold temperature (T c) is the base temperature below which the chill days (D c) are accumulated daily since the onset of dormancy until the chilling requirement (R c) is met.
If R c is satisfied, rest (endodormancy) is released and the heat (or anti-chill) days (D h) begins to accrue towards the heating requirement (R h).
The peak bloom date is determined when R h has been satisfied past the bud-burst.
The rate of D c and D h accumulation depends on the daily air temperatures – mean (T a), maximum (T max), and minimum (T min) – relative to species specific temperature thresholds as detailed in Cesaraccio et al. [18] and Jung et al. [19]. In our approach, the rate of endodormancy release is tracked by the accumulation of D c/R c towards unity at which point the resting period is over. Similarly, the rate of floral development after the resting period is modeled by daily accumulation of D h/R h.https://i0.wp.com/wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2018/04/cherry-bloom-time.png

SOURCE: Predicting the Timing of Cherry Blossoms in Washington, DC and Mid-Atlantic States in Response to Climate Change
As you can see, this is far from the simple equivalency of bloom date = temperature that is usually portrayed.
I know that my plum trees in my yard are easily fooled. Last year they bloomed in February because we had a couple of weeks of unusually warm temperatures in the midst of a cold spring.
As a result, I fear that the cherry tree bloom dates, like tree rings, are not all that good as thermometers …
My best to you, and thanks for your unflagging contributions to my learning,
w.

“It was off the scale, and could only have happened in a world already suffering from the depths of a solar grand minimum.”
Not so, extreme cold winters occur at certain heliocentric configurations of the gas giants regardless of solar minima.

J. Peterson:
You asked Willis,
well I’m not Willis, and
I don’t get upset like Willis does,
when others disagree with him,
but I’ll risk getting him upset.
I think Willis gave an incomplete answer
when he wrote:
“we don’t have either good sunspot data
or good temperature data for the Maunder Minimum,
so it’s hard to say anything for sure
… it was a long time ago.”
The Little Ice Age contained four minimums,
and several unusually cold periods, based
mainly on anecdotal evidence,
which may be as useful as today’s
infilled, “adjusted” “re-adjusted”
surface temperature data !
The cold period people most complained about,
by far, and one that included a few famines too,
was the Maunder Minimum period.
It’s important to understand that the
three other minimums did not get
much attention — the Maunder
seemed to be unique.
If you blame the Maunder cold weather
on the sun, then you have to explain three
things that contradict that claim:
(1) Why was the coldest part
of the Maunder Minimum
at the beginning,
rather than at the end ?
(2) Why were the other three Little Ice Age minimums
not so cold, and not getting the attention / complaints
like the Maunder Minimum did, and
(3) Why were some LIA cold periods
between the four LIA minimums
rather than DURING them ?
Good luck explaining those three observations!
I know that anecdotal evidence is not
precise temperature data, and only applies to Europe,
but climate science still has no precise data,
and the first true global temperature data compilations
started in 1979.
Unusually cold weather gets lots of attention,
and some cold periods during the Maunder Minimum
got lots of negative attention.
But that doesn’t mean the other three LIA
minimums should be ignored, in order to
cherry pick Maunder anecdotes, and jump
to conclusions from them.
My climate change bloghttp://www.elOnionBloggle.Blogspot.com

“Figure 2: A magnetic image of the sun with the tiny spot showing the magnetic field polarity of solar cycle no. 25. Source. All spots of the still ongoing solar cycle no. 24 have opposite polarity: white section to the right and black to the left. The colors of the tiny cycle 25 spots are reversed.”

The figure legend should say that the polarity of the sunspot pattern is hemisphere dependent.

I already explained in a previous comment that: Almost all researchers think that cycle 25 will start late 2019 or even in 2020-2021. However, while analyzing the lowest 10.7cm solar flux values, we find an imminent start for cycle 25 around March-April 2018. This is also confirmed with an algorithm that calculates a negative strength from the Sun’s polar fields during November 2017–March 2018.http://gsjournal.net/Science-Journals/Research%20Papers/View/7246
Mind: I was fare before any astronomer to publish this. First publication on March 21…
I have 3 theories that proof this standpoint is right. Two are in the above link and a third is at a journal now, so I am not allowed to publish it here. Leif: it your heart out…

The question is not when SC25 will start. Many SC minimums have overlap between the end of the current and the start of the next. This is evident even from a casual inspection of the historical butterfly diagram.
The question is: When will SC24 end?
And it remains to be seen if SC25 has a very slow to start ramping its SSN’s up, as SC24 was in 2009. This slow start to SC24 effectively lengthened the “official” length of SC23 and contributes SC24 apparent short length.

The question is indeed when cycle 25 will start… There are 12,000 astronomers in the world i believe… NONE OF THEM HAVE A THEORY WHEN IT WILL START. Almost all think 2020-2021… I have 3 theories that say March- April 2018! How can so many astronomers don’t have a clue? Simple… They overlook basic calculations… They even don’t know linear math!

Signs of SC25 were visible even back in 2016, see e.g. the HMI nuggethttp://hmi.stanford.edu/hminuggets/?p=1657
“Analyzing the toroidal field component from data collected by the Solar Dynamics Observatory/Helioseismic Magnetic Imager (SDO/HMI) and Wilcox Solar Observatory (WSO), we see signs of the next solar cycle have already appeared at high latitudes.” Posted on August 3, 2016.

http://hmi.stanford.edu/hminuggets/?p=1657 :
“The toroidal component clearly shows the life of solar cycles (Fig. 1). After the maximum of one sunspot cycle, the next cycle starts at high latitude with toroidal field starting to change directions, which is demonstrated by changes in the signs of the leading and following polarities. Upon reaching the equator, the cycle reaches a minimum while the next cycle is at least four years old. The typical “11-year” cycle takes approximately 16 years to move from high to low latitude.”

Leif you just tell fairy tales… Everybody knows you can see the overlap of cycles years beforehand… THE QUESTION IS WHEN WILL CYLE 25 OFFICIALLy START? Just look around and everybody agrees late 2019 or 2020-2021… It is even on the website from David Hathaway!
Solar Cycle 25 Prediction. We find that the polar fields indicate that Cycle 25 will be similar in size to (or slightly smaller than) the current small cycle, Cycle 24. Small cycles, like Cycle 24, start late and leave behind long cycles with deep extended minima. Therefor, we expect a similar deep, extended minimum for the Cycle 24/25 minimum in 2020.
Jan Alvestad speculates April 2018 IF the cycle doesn’t ramp up fast… I believe it will ramp up fast and my guess is March, 2018
And again… a reversed sunspot today on Solen Info website… Spooky hé
You will know shortly… I expect serious apologies because you blocked the publication of my sunspot theories…

The question is indeed when cycle 25 will start.
Then it’s not a question any more is it?
The question remains how long will SC24 persist. And whether weak cycles (like 24) are longer or shorter than average.

Then each solar cycle’s length (in time) should be measured independent of the following cycle. And probably assessed as well for each hemisphere.
Simply saying SC23 was over 12 years (and such), ignores the fact that SC24 was very slow to get going. Thus user the artificial criteria of a total minimum as the criteria for dilenation is misleading as to the characterization of a SC, since they overlap in time only to varying degrees (but not by polarity or latitude). Thus each SC is its own phenomemnon and independt or what preceded it or follwows it.
That is unless you think the sun’s magnetic field has a memory of what it did in its previously reversed polarity self, i.e. the last cycle, or even worse, it’s is anticipating (non-causally) what the next cycle’s characteristics (SSN activity) will be.

That is unless you think the sun’s magnetic field has a memory of what it did in its previously reversed polarity self, i.e. the last cycle, or even worse, it’s is anticipating (non-causally) what the next cycle’s characteristics (SSN activity) will be.
Joel, you almost got that right.
But the sun does have a [weak] memory of the previous cycle, namely the polar fields near the end of a cycle. Some of the magnetic flux during a cycle is carried to the poles by a meridional circulation, but only a small part of it so there is an element of luck or randomness in the process]. This memory is used in determining the next cycle, but is then erased during that new cycle being replaced by the magnetic flux of that cycle. So the sun has a memory back one cycle and no more.
Then, the next cycle erupts based on that [weak] memory independent of all earlier cycles [and independent of the next cycle, of course]. The artificial timing of the minimum does, however, depend on the next cycle. If the next cycle after a minimum will be large {or small} , the [artificial] minimum is shifted to an earlier {or later} time, which is why one has to be careful using the so determined minimum for anything.

Leif,
Memory implies “information.” Information in context is coherent data.
Simple residual energy that gets transported back poleward, just dimply that, … residual energy from a previous state.
To Wit:
Consider SC 19 and SC20.http://i64.tinypic.com/b6eqnn.jpg
SC19 was unarguably the Big Dog SC of the 20th Century, and its max coinciding nicely with the IGY.
But then it was followed by a much subdued SC20. Then SC 21 ramped up again to return the sun to its magnetic glory.
Why did SC 20 look so miserly? The residual magnetic energy from the Big Dog SC19 carried over, not to enhance SC20, but to destructively interfere with (due to opposing hemispheric polarities) SC20’s upper convective zone maximum magnetic potential.,/b>
So SC 19 did not convey the information (memory) that it was big and so should 20 be as well. Rather, it (the residual energy of opposite polarity for each hemisphere under SC 20 influence) led to a diminished SC20. That was possibly even the reason for the cold early 70’s when nascent climate science was declaring the start of an Ice Age at hand.

So SC 19 did not convey the information (memory) that it was big and so should 20 be as well. Rather, it (the residual energy of opposite polarity for each hemisphere under SC 20 influence) led to a diminished SC20.
Your comment is a bit muddled.
The reason SC20 turned out so small was that the build-up of the polar fields during the decliming part of SC19 in 1960-1964 included too many active regions with an unfavorable polarity so that the polar fields became rather weak, resulting in a small next cycle [SC20]. Unfortunately, the measurement of solar magnetic fields was in its infancy so we don’t have good systematic data. That only began in 1967.

The point is residual energy is not information (i.e. memory). In SC20’s case, residual magnetic regions from the Big Dog 19 it led to destructive interference in SC 20, rather than information that 20 should be “big” as well. Overall, the sun was in a heightened magnetic state as SC 21 and SC22 maximum’s showed the dynamo was still cranked up.

For the actual observational epoch [400 years] there has been a quasi-period of about 100 years

Bold prediction. I have plotted cycle length versus cycle activity, and if cycle 24 ends now it will be completely off the charts.https://i.imgur.com/uC77Aj3.png
No wonder that everybody thinks differently. We will have to wait and see.

There is no justification for your red arrow. What your figure shows is that there really is no relation between length and amplitude. You could delineated the ‘cloud’ of points differently:http://www.leif.org/research/Solar-Cycle-Length-vs-Amplitude.png
Or just ‘lasso’ the points [blue oval]. SC25 certainly fits within the cloud and is thus not an ‘outlier’.

The red arrow is the path that it should follow to be within the envelope of the previous 28 cycles.
Note also that while active cycles can be both long or short, the previous very low active cycles have all been long.
Of course the sample is small enough that the statistic is uncertain, but the alternative explanation, that SC24 will continue for one or two more years, is also possible.

The red arrow is the path that it should follow to be within the envelope of the previous 28 cycles.
You could make that argument for many of the previous cycles, in fact, for every point on the envelope. There is no reason SC25 should be within that envelope. Rather SC25 redefines the envelope and makes it more symmetric [as we would expect a random cloud to be]

Actually there is. It is called probability. As the number of dots increases, the chances of the new one falling outside the range of the previous ones decreases. And SC24 is up to now quite inactive and very short.

I see you didn’t understand my argument. A cloud of dots is a cloud because it presents a distribution in two dimensions. The distribution is the probability of the next dot to be in the cloud.
Right now SC24 is outside the cloud. Since SC24 has not ended, the highest probability is that it will continue.

SC24 is outside the cloud
SC24 helps define the cloud.
To illustrate the lack of correlation, consider these cycles that all had the same lengths
SC7 72 SNmax 124 months
SC16 82 125
SC17 120 127
SC21 167 124
You could have picked any cycle on the edge of the cloud and argued that it is outside of the cloud defined by the other cycles.

None that we know about. There must be physical limits to the length and the maximum activity of solar cycles, but they are unknown.
I am just cautioning against thinking that SC24 is over. Other cycles have been at this time with a similar level of activity or even less, and have continued for many more months. While the past doesn’t say it is not possible for SC24 to end now, it says something like that hasn’t happened in the last 300 years for cycles with such low activity.
Just because we see zero sunspots for months doesn’t mean the cycle has finished. We know of previous instances with even less activity and longer cycles.

The point is residual energy is not information (i.e. memory). In SC20’s case, residual magnetic regions from the Big Dog 19 it led to destructive interference in SC 20, rather than information that 20 should be “big” as well. Overall, the sun was in a heightened magnetic state as SC 21 and SC22 maximum’s showed the dynamo was still cranked up.

lsvalgaard Used to be someone I actually listened to and thought was highly qualified. I no longer feel that way. Something has changed in his demeanor that makes him sound more like a zealot than a scientist. Shame really.

TRANSLATION: When Leif Svalgaard agrees with me he’s a genius, but when he disagrees with me he’s a zealot …
w.

When people begin changing the past, and then steadfastly argue that their new history is the only history that is correct, because models, they no longer have any credibility and they show that they are no longer rational. Its been over a decade that I have been reading this blog, and when I first came here he was credible because he used reality to makes his arguments. Now when I come here and read what he has to say does not make any sense at all. For example…
“Except that you can’t base this on ‘past cycles’.”
Why can you not base this on ‘past cycles’? What is the reason that we study the past? So that we can get an understanding of what is possible and what may or not happen based on history and any underlying cycles that may be present there.
Maybe the reason he thinks you cannot base this on ‘past cycles’ is that his agenda is to wipe out cycles altogether, because that fits his worldview of what should be, rather than what is.
Anyways. As I said, he used to be a different person. That person was credible. This new person he has become is not credible.

Why can you not base this on ‘past cycles’? What is the reason that we study the past? So that we can get an understanding of what is possible and what may or not happen based on history and any underlying cycles that may be present there.
We study the past to understand the physics of what is going on. The processes that underlie solar activity is by now fairly well understood. Each solar ‘cycle’ depends on what the previous cycle leaves behind which has a large random component. This means that we cannot predict more than one ‘cycle’ ahead and that a longer ‘cycle’ therefore is not a reliable predictor, as each new cycle erases the memory of the previous one.

Let me get this straight. It takes about 1 million years for a photon created in the core of the sun to reach the surface to be emitted. But the physics of solar cycles is that they apparently are determined about 11 years in advance…

The magnetic field we observe in sunspots is not generated in the core of the sun, but in the so-called convection zone just below the surface. There the energy reaches the surface in a matter of weeks, so no problem with the time scale.

But the core is where the energy comes from that drives 90%+ of the Sun’s activity. And all the space between the core and the surface is filled with various solar cycles. Some chaotic, some ordered and predictable. Which in turn drives the ‘so called’? convection zone. Somewhere along the line, the sunspot cycle you see today was set in motion centuries in advance of them happening deeper in the sun.
Or do you think that these ‘cycles’ just pop into existence 8 to 15 years in advance of them happening?

And all the space between the core and the surface is filled with various solar cycles. Some chaotic, some ordered and predictable. Which in turn drives the ‘so called’? convection zone. Somewhere along the line, the sunspot cycle you see today was set in motion centuries in advance of them happening deeper in the sun.
No, that is not how it works. Plasma with a magnetic field is buoyant and will rise to the surface in the matter of weeks. Read this to better understand the process: https://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/dynamo.shtml

lsvalgaard Did you read that? They looked at everything singularly and individually, and then at the end came up with a fake number to come up with an 11 year cycle.
” At the surface this flow is a slow 20 m/s (40 mph) but the return flow toward the equator inside the Sun where the density is much higher must be much slower still – 1 to 2 m/s (2 to 4 mph). This slow return flow would carry material from the mid-latitudes to the equator in about 11 years.” Now maybe it is just poorly written, but the way it reads is that, because it is denser there, the flow must be slower, I agree, it will be slower. That is then followed by If we give it a 1 to 2 m/s speed (has this been measured or just modeled?) it comes out to 11 years, which, coincidentally is the same as our observed sun spot cycle length. Bingo, our model works. The article does not give the basis for the 1-2 m/s speed.
But something drives this meridional flow. It is not varying as widely as it does due to nothing.
There is something deeper inside the sun, probably hundreds if not millions of processes which are all cyclic to some extent or another that sum out to create what we see at the surface. And you try to say, nope, the Meridional cycle wipes out its memory and it is just all random. Do not buy that. I am not convinced.
And it still does not answer the real argument that tells me that you cannot be trusted. The fact that you want to rewrite the past with modeling when we have acceptable sunspot observations. While I applaud advances in technology such that we can now identify significantly more sunspots that old technology would allow for, that does not mean we can hind cast back and say that there really were x more sunspots than were recorded, anymore than we can realistically hind cast back and say that every single observed temperature before 1950 was measured too high and thus needs to be lowered by a certain amount. Oh look, we have a warming trend! Oh look, I just wiped out a long standing observation that sunspots help drive the climate on Earth because newer technology can see smaller and shorter lived sunspots! Maybe the smaller sunspots are just not that persuasive at changing the climate and that the better measure on how it drives climate is a different measure of the same phenomenon.
I am not a solar physicist. Then again, I am not an imbecile. So long as you make up fake numbers to come to your conclusions, I have every right to not trust you and your conclusions. I think I am more inclined to believe the “INFLUENCE OF SOLAR ACTIVITY ON STATE OF WHEAT
MARKET IN MEDIEVAL ENGLAND” people, who used factual numbers devoid of being massaged and revised.

But something drives this meridional flow.
The flow [just as on the Earth: the Hadley cell] is driven by a very small temperature difference between the poles and the equator.
The revised sunspot numbers are based solely on observations and are now the ‘official’ record.
You willful ignorance does no become a skeptic.

A very small temperature difference… So, something like extra energy certainly would not change that!
Well, someone below gave a link to what I thought your new research was on. Maybe you can give me a link and I can be sure I am attributing correctly.

Maybe you can give me a link and I can be sure I am attributing correctly
I’m not sure what you are referring [as Willis says: always say exactly what you refer to]
Here is a link to most of my work:http://www.leif.org/research/

astonerii
“At the surface this flow is a slow 20 m/s (40 mph) but the return flow toward the equator inside the Sun where the density is much higher must be much slower still – 1 to 2 m/s (2 to 4 mph). “
The people you are citing are thinking about what they do. You, apparently not so much.
The flow is of matter. It is the same matter that flows towards the poles as returns at depth.
Down there, the density [measured by helioseismology] is ten times larger than near the surface, so the matter has to flow ten times slower in order to conserve the mass.

There is a lot of claims here regarding the likelihood of a new grand solar minimum. It would be interesting to know which experts would be willing to back their claims with corresponding bets. Isn’t there a London based market/broker house where you can bet on the truth content of empirically verifiable scientific claims? If there was something like a “predictit.org”-page for science we could follow the pricing of the claims and anyone who has the feeling that the other side is either manipulating the pricing or is just to dumb to bet on the correct outcome could make a lot of money by betting against the tide. If there is such a web page out there of which I am not aware, I would appreciate it a lot if someone could post a link.

Willis, old buddy, old mate, old pal….
Have a look at Lucifer series 3, episode 8. Scroll along to 26 minutes and look at the surface of the bay. For some reason i have trouble convincing people that pollution-caused smooths actually exist, but that image is pretty clear, with the smoothed areas, the curved sections maybe the result of a passing boat, standing out as obviously lighter patches.
Now, I know you like digging into data. Could I please ask you to have a look at this phenomenon and ask the pertinent questions:
1. How much cloud albedo reduction would result in half of the 20th century warming? Salter and Latham probably have that figure. (insert winky smiley here.)
2. By how much is production of salt aerosols reduced by a) wave breaking in the open ocean and b) wave breaking on the shore?
3. Could “the blip” referred to by Tom Wigley be related to the Battle of the Atlantic and the oil spills caused by hostile action?
4. What is the actual composition of the smooths? Are they just caused by light oil (in which case it is surprising that they are not very rapidly oxidised) or are they a mix of pollutants with a much longer life?
5. Did the introduction of synthetic detergents, difficult for natural processes to break down, change the structure of the ocean’s boundary layer?
6. What is the minimum influence of smooths on aerosol production that would explain reduced cloud amounts, albedo increase etc which would in turn explain a significant amount of the 20th century warming?
7. Does a smooth-polluted droplet coalesce more easily or does it resist coalescence? Do we need to know more about the composition of the smooth to answer this? What would coalesce changes alter the amount of water vapour in the atmosphere?
8. Does the early 20th century warming correlate with increased oil spills and/or chemical industry expansion?
9. Does Arctic ice loss correlate with oil drilling and leaks in that basin> Russia is leaking immense amounts of light oil from Siberia.
10. What further information is needed to answer the question ‘is warming related to ocean surface pollution’? I guess NASA imagery has a lot of the answers.
That should keep you busy — it would take me several lifetimes so I expect you to have cracked it by Christmas.
Rgds
JF
RE:
1. I’ve seen an estimate that 2 or 3 percent would equal the CO2 figure.
2. I have seen a smooth north of Madeira suppressing wave breaking up to Force 4. When the MV Braer hit the Shetlands there was gale blowing, and on videos from above the cloud amounts downwind of the spill are dramatically reduced. My fond eye sees odd cloud response to the Deepwater Horizon spill.
4, The smooth from abeam Porto* to a couple of hundred miles short of Madeira cannot have been recent — far too far from land — unless it was caused by seabed leaks, If that were the case then we’ve got a whole new problem to research.
5. Tide.
9. Smoothed water has lower albedo, but would the reduced wave action break less ice. If there are fewer salt CCNs, is there less fog and does that warm or cool?
*I still think of the place as Oporto which rather dates me.

Julian, my friend, always good to hear from you. As a long-time sailor, I’ve seen plenty of “slicks” at sea. Some are from fish oils. Some are from natural oil seeps. Some are from oil spills. Some are from underwater vulcanism. Some are from pollution. I don’t know of anyone who has quantified the different causes.
Regarding your questions:

1. How much cloud albedo reduction would result in half of the 20th century warming? Salter and Latham probably have that figure. (insert winky smiley here.)

Unknown, since the earth’s climate is heavily buffered.

2. By how much is production of salt aerosols reduced by a) wave breaking in the open ocean and b) wave breaking on the shore?

Generally salt aerosols are increased, not reduced, by wave breaking. Without waves breaking, I’m not sure you’d get much salt aerosols at all.

3. Could “the blip” referred to by Tom Wigley be related to the Battle of the Atlantic and the oil spills caused by hostile action?

I’ve seen this hypothesis before, but without any numbers or any answer even as to sign. The oil slick would decrease evaporation, so the ocean should warm. It would also decrease salt spray which serves as cloud nucleation. However, it would also affect (in some unknown manner and amount) the absorption of both long- and short-wave radiation, which would cool the ocean. Overall? ¿Quien sabe?

4. What is the actual composition of the smooths? Are they just caused by light oil (in which case it is surprising that they are not very rapidly oxidised) or are they a mix of pollutants with a much longer life?

As a long-time sailor, I’ve seen plenty of “slicks” at sea. Some are from fish oils. Some are from natural oil seeps. Some are from oil spills. Some are from underwater vulcanism. Some are from pollution. I don’t know of anyone who has quantified the different causes.

5. Did the introduction of synthetic detergents, difficult for natural processes to break down, change the structure of the ocean’s boundary layer?

My guess would be “not much”, just because of the size of the ocean. However, I know of no data on the subject.

6. What is the minimum influence of smooths on aerosol production that would explain reduced cloud amounts, albedo increase etc which would in turn explain a significant amount of the 20th century warming?

See answer 1 above.

7. Does a smooth-polluted droplet coalesce more easily or does it resist coalescence? Do we need to know more about the composition of the smooth to answer this? What would coalesce changes alter the amount of water vapour in the atmosphere?

Unknown, I don’t know if anyone has even studied this question.

8. Does the early 20th century warming correlate with increased oil spills and/or chemical industry expansion?

Unknown. Disentangling the chain of effects regarding temperature is very, very difficult for a variety of reasons including lack of data and lack of a suitable model that includes all variables and more importantly, includes emergent phenomena.

9. Does Arctic ice loss correlate with oil drilling and leaks in that basin> Russia is leaking immense amounts of light oil from Siberia.

Probably not. Like they say “The sea is so big, and my boat (or oil spill) is so small”.

10. What further information is needed to answer the question ‘is warming related to ocean surface pollution’? I guess NASA imagery has a lot of the answers.

For starters you’d need some way to read the exact composition of the ocean’s surface skin from a satellite … once you had that satellite in orbit, you’d need some years of that data to even start to get a hold on the question. The main problem, however, is that if there is any disturbance or change, emergent climate phenomena act to restore the status quo ante … so how much it would change is unknowable without computer models several orders of magnitude more detailed, more complex, and more subtle than those we have today.
Best to you,
w.

Regardless of the debates about solar cycles relationship with climate, tomatoes don’t lie. Transplant dates, without protection, has moved nearly three weeks (toward summer) since 2000.
Whatever you folks do, try to help the tomatoes.

I am writing this from Marbella in Spain which is in a region called the Costa del Sol (Coast of the Sun). The micro-climate here is dominated by a crescent shaped range of mountain to the North from Gibraltar in the West to Maro in the East. Winds from the South are warm from Africa, from the North they bring rain as they do from the West (the Atlantic). The mountains cause the clouds to rise and the rain does not reach the coast, but falls on the mountains, on average, we have 320 days of sunshine a year here. My point is this; confusing weather with climate is something that is not normally a good thing, but I can say that there has been more cloud and rain last year and so far this year.The clouds from the North and the West are still dropping rain on the mountains, but we are getting clouds overhead, seeded by alpha and beta particle cosmic rays from which we are no longer shielded from by the sunspot free Sun. I am sure that there are other regions of the world where a similar situation exists (including I believe, Southern California). This could be a unique chance to study these regions to determine if the Sun is a major driver of climate when compared with CO2 (which I believe it is).

The majority of North America had a cool winter and the spring is 2 to 3 weeks late.
Obviously, this doesn’t show up in the official climate temperature record because older records are lowered every month they update it.

Expect that in 2 or 3 years, NOAA will erase this cold spring. And Paul Homewood will catch them at it, NOAA’s pants down altering station data. And the mainstream press will not report NOAA’s shenanigans. Then do over.
Cycles.

When one reads this thread the only conclusion is everyone thinks they and only they are correct, while everyone disagrees with the other big league.
The conclusion is to wait and see.
For my two cents I say it is solar/geo magnetic fields which determine the climate. I can’t prove it just like none of the others can prove what they believe.
I also say TSI changes alone can not do it and TSI changes alone do not even come close in explaining all the sudden abrupt climatic changes we have had in the past.
As far as the recent global temperature drop one can make the argument it was the ending of the recent El NINO ,that correlates to this. The drop according to satellite data , is only .1c or so and from a high starting value post 2016.
In closing TSI changes do have role in the climate but are just one of the many factors that change the climate but NOT thee factor.

“I also say TSI changes alone can not do it and TSI changes alone do not even come close in explaining all the sudden abrupt climatic changes we have had in the past.”
Climatic changes in the past can be explained by reductions of TSI that persisted longer than the Maunder Minimum. Also, GISP ice core data shows several instances of rates of temperature increase during the Holocene that were very similar to the rate of temperature increase since the LIA, indicating the distinct possibility solar activity changes were the driver.
There is no warming without additional solar energy, which in short enough times scales is from TSI.
“When one reads this thread the only conclusion is everyone thinks they and only they are correct, while everyone disagrees with the other big league.”
You are projecting. It is people like you who must have everything comform to your predeterminations.
Your rambling pronouncements say your predetermined vague ideas are impervious to logic and data, which is why you’re not even “little league”. Sooner or later the field always shakes out, except the chaff don’t know they aren’t the wheat.
“For my two cents I say it is solar/geo magnetic fields which determine the climate. I can’t prove it just like none of the others can prove what they believe.”
“In closing TSI changes do have role in the climate but are just one of the many factors that change the climate but NOT thee factor.”
Completely vacuous. What is THEE factor? How does geomagnetism cause warming? You say you can’t prove it, so why talk about it? I showed TSI is the THEE factor along the way pre and post 2015/16 ENSO.
You’re basically fickle. You agreed with me numerous times 2014-2015 on the exact same info and ideas.
So go on Sally, keep muddying the waters.

“As far as the recent global temperature drop one can make the argument it was the ending of the recent El NINO ,that correlates to this. The drop according to satellite data , is only .1c or so and from a high starting value post 2016.”
You got part of this right. The drop coincides with the ENSO, that conformed according to my solar theory.
All the cooling I specifically refer to in all of my research to date is from the top of the ENSO to the solar cycle bottom.
I know based on understanding the solar cycle TSI influence on temperatures to only expect a modest cooling until then, which is far different than the unspecified fear-mongering claims others who think they know make.
For instance the constant repetitious reinforcement of the wrong solar theories has created an expectation for something that isn’t going to happen (prolonged cooling), and the public and skeptics are going to associate these failed solar theories as ‘thee solar theory’, then just dismiss solar out of hand, which has already happened many times.
Giving false information about the solar effect is truly damaging disinformation.
It’s because you are completely wrong about how the sun warms/cools that you’ve been projecting an unrealistic cooling for what, a decade now, continually kicking the can down the road [‘time will tell’, ‘wait and see’], for which you are constantly ribbed about on Dr. Roy’s site, and since you don’t how the solar cycle TSI influence works, you can’t see it when it’s right in front of your eyes.
The new solar cycle will take over soon enough and we’ll have another go-around of solar warming that will only taper off into the next minimum, as we are now.
The only chance for extended deeper cooling is if we have a lower activity Dalton-like solar cycle next.

To change the climate two things must occur which are a lowering of overall sea surface temperatures and increasing the albedo by a slight amount.
This can be accomplished if both solar /geo magnetic fields become weak enough and for a sufficient duration of time.
If the magnetic fields become weak enough they (I think) will promote lower overall sea surface temperatures while increasing global snow, cloud coverage and by promoting an increase in major explosive volcanic eruptions.
Overall a greater meridional atmospheric circulation pattern, an increase in galactic cosmic rays, and less UV/NEAR UV light as a result of the weakening solar/geo magnetic fields could promote all of this.

In poker playing, they speak of a “tell”, which is some trait a player has, which they aren’t even aware of, that indicates what they plan to do. Back when I first began looking into global warming over a decade ago, I noticed traits or “tells” about those arguing for the manmade warming idea indicating that they were arguing from an irrational standpoint, and were essentially lying. They’d use various combinations of logical fallacies, relying particularly on the straw man, argument from authority, consensus, and the old standby, ad hominem arguments.
Fast forwarding, within the Skeptic community, sadly, I noticed similar tells to those arguing against the idea of the sun being a major driver (the oceans being another) of climate historically, and now. The motives may vary, but one big one is likely to be that they are onboard to some extent at least with manmade warming. But this, of course doesn’t jibe with the historical record. So, they resort to various logical fallacies to cover that fact. Sad.

No we should not be experiencing a LIA now, and the problem is a few wacked-out Youtubers carrying on about it as though we are, most know nothing of TSI, and are prone to falling for the completely bogus cosmic ray climate theory.
TSI simply has been high enough in every solar cycle since the LIA for net warming.
Only during the Dalton minimum was solar activity low enough for a sharp temperature drop, and even that was temporary and only so deep.https://www.dropbox.com/s/1o2ew4r48mwa9kr/Fig21%20Solar%20driven%20post%201700%27s%20climate%20shift.JPG?dl=0

It’s the last figure in the poster summary of my solar work since 2014, data sources are listed on page 2. The SSN-PMOD TSI model (d) is applied to v2 SSN to get (f). The accumulation models (c) are simple running sums of monthly data summed above the threshold, subtracted below it. They indicate inflection points and duration of long-term solar activity trends.

@Arno said- This bothers me. If true, we should be experiencing a Little Ice Age but we are not.
Well Arno, you need to read more skeptic blogs like this one, heh. Up until two weeks ago I was thinking we are coming into a grand solar minimum. But I’m reconsidering that after rereading some articles by Javier, Bob Weber’s posts, and this post on Breitbart (and other non- MsM sites), I now believe we entered a ‘Micro- IceAge’ in 2004 when Bob Weber’s fig.10 showed a drop in 10.7 cm solar flux, leading to ocean cooling. I’m calling this a ‘Micro’ because I don’t expect it to last more than solar cycle 24, 25, and 26. Then there will be maybe 7 years to transition back to normal global temperatures; say by 2050.
This is an excerpt from an essay allegedly by James Delingpole posted on Breitbart …
The 2016-18 Big Chill was composed of two Little Chills, the biggest five month drop ever (February to June 2016) and the fourth biggest (February to June 2017). A similar event from February to June 2018 would bring global average temperatures below the 1980s average. February 2018 was colder than February 1998.
From February 2016 to February 2018 (the latest month available) global average temperatures dropped 0.56°C. You have to go back to 1982-84 for the next biggest two-year drop, 0.47°C—also during the global warming era. All the data in this essay come from GISTEMP Team, 2018: GISS Surface Temperature Analysis (GISTEMP). NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (dataset accessed 2018-04-11)
What the mainstream media is not highlighting is this last winter was the coldest in 40 years in many countries in the northern hemisphere. North Eastern European countries on the Atlantic coast reported last summer was the coldest in 40 Years also.
Also this spring has been cold and longer than usual which will affect the growing season.
During the Little Ice Age the temperature dropped about half a degree globally. As you can see from the Delingpole essay, it has dropped by 0.56 degrees already. This is what we can expect starting from last Dec; some winters extremely cold, some wet cool springs to kill crops, some cold summers, and more frequent and severe storms. The storminess index went from 6.5 to 14 during the LIA. This slide into cold is showing up in German weather station records where the last 30 yrs of winter (DJF) are trending -19 dgC per 1000 yrs, much faster than the slow decline to normal glacials.
I expect in the next ten years one billion will actually starve due to crop failures*, and one billion will be eaten by stronger omnivores; feral dogs, cats, and … humans.
As the legal beagles like to say, ‘Time is of the essence,’ so the sooner you act, the better your chances of survival.
Sandy, Minister of Future
*NB- the WHO reports 800 mln suffer from hunger, 10 mln die from starvation each yr, 60 mln die from disease each yr.
So now thats 70 mln / yr, plus more food stress, weakening immune system, more disease, amplified by cold climate / storm stress, could easily be 100 mln /yr … Thats 1 Bln / 10 yrs.

No, we’re not having a Little Ice Age. We’re just having cold weather in places where it should be at least 65F daytime and no lower than 45F at night. Those are historical averages.
My only concern is how long this low activity period in the Sun will last, and how it will affect things that we all take for granted, e.g., transportation costs, weather forecasts, food costs, utilities – all those things, which may be modest in cost now, but may rise in cost as time goes by, for difficulty in transporting them, or drop in price because product transport is much easier. Is this weather cycle going to make ocean transport of products more difficult with extreme weather cycles, or is it going to give us calmer weather and quicker delivery? There have been two Navy ships that collided with merchant vessels (container ships) in the dark in calm weather, mostly due to mistakes in navigation and too much traffic in shipping lanes. Fog can be a serious factor in this kind of thing.
Try to look at the practical side of this, because all the arguments about charts and tables and solar physics this and climate that are dismissing the more important thing: how is this solar minimum (as it appears to be) going to affect daily lives? If you take the food on your plate or the heat in your home for granted, stop doing that.
I woke to a 6AM (CDT) temperature of 24F. Clear skies, low humidity, etc. Not enough water vapor in the air to leave a coating of frost anywhere. This is something that should concern you. It concerns me, because I know that it has side effects.
If you ignore it and muddle over charts and graphs instead, you are ignoring what is right under your noses. It does not answer that question: how is this solar minimum going to affect what we take for granted in our day-to-day existence?

how is this solar minimum going to affect what we take for granted in our day-to-day existence?
The minimum will have very little, if any, influence. The real threat comes from the ‘solar storms’ that occur when activity picks up. A storm of the magnitude similar to one in 1859 [the Carrington Event] could destroy much of our technological infrastructure and [for example] leave us with no electricity for months [or even years]. The occurrence of such an even is not a question about ‘if’, but about ‘when’.

That is exactly my point, Leif. Thank you.
An example of what I was referring to is that during the period of the Little Ice Age, . there were droughts in the American west that spurred people to move out of places they had occupied for a long time. Chaco Canyon, for example, was settled by nomadic people around 200AD, undewent several periods of construction, especially from 900 to 1100AD, and then a massive, long-term drought began around 1150, which sent the Anaszai away from there.
That long-term drought hasn’t broken yet. If the weather patterns change, the drought could end.

Sara, Leif is correct about the severity of a Carrington-type event. A recent government report estimated that an EMP attack on the US could result in a 90% reduction of our population within a year or so. Restoration of our electrical grid could take at least a year and probably longer, maybe as much as five years. Reserve world food supplies are at a very low three months (my guess is that the US has a somewhat longer reserve) and without power, distribution of that food would be curtailed. The effects on civility would be immense.
The one benefit of a cooling world, compared to a Carrington event (or similar), is that we could have time to make adjustments. Plant geneticists and farmers would be under pressure to increase yields (and probably succeed) and decisions regarding land use would be required to maintain our food supply. The US and many other countries could make those adjustments fairly easily but high latitude countries will face a tougher situation.
Much of this site is devoted to the pure science of the topics discussed (thankfully!); but, Sara, you are correct to worry about the resulting applied science issues.

“how is this solar minimum going to affect what we take for granted in our day-to-day existence?”
If you’re like us in Michigan you’ll burn more wood, gas, or oil, use more electricity, and shovel more snow.
You’ll feed the wild birds and animals longer into spring, as we’re doing.
and you’ll wait for the lake to melt so you can go kayaking.
and for the ground to thaw to plant the garden and clean the yard and get more wood.
Food choices may become limited as the growing season is widely affected.

I don’t have the most recent edition of ‘Stocking Up’, but what I have is good for the long term.
Still putting out birdfood. Lack of bugs now – late emergence, not a good sign, robins are too skinny – means get suet and dried mealworms at the hardware store. I will even get stuff for the squirrels.
I should have violets in half of my small lawn. So far, only three plants have shown up. Not even dandelions. Grass is too short for this time of year, but the ground is cold, too.
Stock the dry foods now, as the price may go up exponentially.
There might be a benefit to it: the ecohippies, CAGWers, Warmians, etc., just might find themselves in a pickle. No large coffee with double whipped soy latte. And whining about having to still wear winter clothing in June.
I’d love to see that.

Bob Weber
From southeastern Michigan where I live:
(1)
Coldest three consecutive weeks since
I moved here 40 years ago:
— Last half of December 2017
and first week of January 2018
(2)
Coldest April except for one strange day
that hit 70 degrees.
(3)
Wife unplugged her heated bird bath
at the end of March, as usual, and then
the water was frozen almost every morning
in April so far — especially unusual
for the second half of April.
(4)
April 29 (today) still very cold
— finally forecast for warm days next
week
I want the global warming we were promised !
What’s talking so long ?
So who do I believe,
my own senses,
of confuser models ?

No we should not be experiencing a LIA now, and the problem is a few wacked-out Youtubers carrying on about it as though we are, most know nothing of TSI, and are prone to falling for the completely bogus cosmic ray climate theory.
Your opinion Bob. It is not bogus however.

Bob my argument for galactic cosmic rays. I do appreciate your work do not get me wrong and at least we both agree the sun does effect the climate. The question is how and we differ in this area to some extent.
The reason why my prediction was pushed back was because the sun was much more active then I thought it was going to be and not until this year has the sun finally got into my solar criteria which I think is necessary to start cooling, following 10+years of sub solar activity in general.
I said this year is a transitional year I have not pushed it out any further and have said this for quite some time now.
LETS TALK ABOUT THE SUN AND HOW IT MIGHT CHANGE THE CLIMATE
Areas of importance which are neglected in large part are the solar wind speed ,the global electrical circuit, and galactic cosmic rays . Actually they are all tied to one another.
When the solar wind decreases the intensities of galactic cosmic rays (GCR)that are allowed to enter the atmosphere will increase and this this in turn intensifies the global electrical circuit.
It has been shown through actual data on a short term basis (days) through the monitoring of Forbush decreases and SEP events which stands for solar particle events both of which originate from the sun , that the electrical circuit decreases following a Forbush decrease which is a lessening of galactic cosmic rays ,while it increases following an SEP event.
This has big implications for solar /climate relationships on a longer term basis because it has been shown through these day to day events that when a FORBUSH DECREASE take place the global electrical circuit decreases which results in a decrease in global cloud coverage and cyclonic systems weakening while the opposite follows an SEP event.
This then can be applied to what happens to global cloud coverage and cyclonic systems over a long term basis when the sun enters a prolonged solar minimum period of activity which lowers the solar wind allowing more GALACTIC COSMIC RAYS to enter the earth’s atmosphere which increases the strength of the global electrical circuit which has been shown on a short term basis(through actual data ) to increase cloud coverage and strengthen cyclonic systems.
CRITERIA NEEDED
350km/sec or lower is needed for the solar wind speed in order to get GCR counts high enough( at least 6500 units) which then will impact the global electrical circuit through strengthening it on a long term basis which then would promote greater global cloud coverage and strengthen cyclonic systems. Higher albedo for sure /and perhaps more precipitation.
In the meantime EUV(100 units or less) /UV light is on the decrease which will effect the atmospheric circulation(more meridional) and sea surface temperatures respectively.
All this is going to lead to global cooling.
Getting back to the solar wind and it’s effects upon the climate these two values are needed in my opinion which are again a solar wind speed sustained over months of less then 350km/sec and a resultant AP index over months of 5 or lower.
Solar irradiance will not be a major player in the changing of the climate it may drop by .15% which would only contribute a .1c to maybe .2c to global cooling.
AS OF NOW GCR COUNTS HAVE BEEN ABOVE 6500 UNITS FOR A FEW MONTHS AND LOOK TO BE INCREASING. READING TODAY 6650 UNITS, AND THE SOLAR WIND HAS FINALLY STARTED TO COME DOWN RIGHT NOW AT 300KM/SEC ALONG WITH THE AP INDEX.
Will this persist and become more common place as we move forward? I say yes and this should in turn effect the climate by cooling it.
Reply
The reason why the galactic cosmic rays increase the global electrical circuit is as follows :
This provided from William Astley
The underlying mechanism is that charged aerosols are more effective than neutral aerosols as ice nuclei (i.e., electrofreezing) and that the enhanced collections of charged evaporation nuclei by supercooled droplets enhance the production of ice by contact ice nucleation (i.e., electroscavenging).
Both electrofreezing and electroscavenging involve an increase in ice production with increasing current density [e.g, Tinsley and Dean, 1991; Tinsley, 2000]. The current density-cloud hypothesis appears to explain solar cycle effects on winter storm dynamics as well as the day to-day changes of Wilcox and Roberts Effects [e.g., Tinsley, 2000]. Kniveton and Todd [2001] found evidence of a statistically strong relationship between cosmic ray flux, precipitation and precipitation efficiency over ocean surfaces at midlatitudes to high latitudes, and
This is the jest of it and I have many more studies that take this point of view.
As I said earlier we all think our take is correct, I see very little consensus when it comes to solar/climate relationships when taken in the broad spectrum. In fact I never have seen such a diversity of differing opinions.
We will see.

“I said this year is a transitional year I have not pushed it out any further and have said this for quite some time now. ”
The next transition is to the next solar cycle, when the solar cycle influence starts anew.
It is insufficient solar energy, ie TSI, going into the cycle minimum that is causing the cooling, not CRs.
If I hadn’t spent so much time over the past three years developing the 5-minute production of the following app image, I would have brought out my TSI work sooner. I also have practical knowledge of ‘electric weather’ effects and events, and know the relative differences from TSI effects via firsthand observations.https://www.dropbox.com/s/q80qk4u0o7b024a/Electric_Weather_20180429_1735.jpg?dl=0

“Solar irradiance will not be a major player in the changing of the climate it may drop by .15% which would only contribute a .1c to maybe .2c to global cooling.”
Here is exactly why your opinion on TSI is easily dismissed out of hand:
Your 0.15% change in TSI is 2W. There is no TSI instrumental monthly or yearly data since 1979 that exhibited a 2W swing, yet the climate changed, rising and falling by 0.1 to 0.2C many times in both directions under much smaller TSI changes since 1979.
Therefore what you said is completely false. 100% crap no one can count on for anything, including you.
From where on earth do you pull your numbers? Your keister?

The 14C record reflects the actual ratio of 14C in tree rings, meaning it can’t be politically adjusted to match new interpretations of old sunspot counts.
It can, nevertheless, still be wrong [and outdated]. Here is the most up-to-date 14C record:http://www.leif.org/research/Differences-GN-14C.png

“The essence of science is the ability to predict.”
OK all you experts, here is a question for any of you who have the courage of your convictions:
Will the six years from 1Jan2018 to 1Jan2024 be colder or warmer than the previous 6 year period, and by how much in degrees C, on average? Why?
Will the twelve years from 1Jan2018 to 1Jan2030 be colder or warmer than the previous 12 year period, and by how much in degrees C, on average? Why?

It will be colder from now till 2030 . Reason will be due to weakening solar/geo magnetic fields which will cause overall sea surface temperatures to fall and the albedo of the earth to increase slightly .
Albedo increase due to an increase in global cloud/snow coverage and major explosive volcanic activity.
How much of a drop is extremely hard to say but I would say at a minimum we are heading toward the 1970’s temperatures and perhaps Dalton type temperatures.
The unknowns are how weak will solar/geo magnetic fields become and are there threshold levels out there?
One thing I am quite confident about is global temperatures will not be increasing from here.

The question is does Allan have his own predictions?
[1]”Will the six years from 1Jan2018 to 1Jan2024 be colder or warmer than the previous 6 year period, and by how much in degrees C, on average? Why?”Colder as the average from 1Jan2012 to 1Jan2018 included the top of the last solar cycle warming, and by 2024, we should be on the other side of the solar cycle onset ENSO, either into the drop after it, or on the recharge thereafter, but the average from 1Jan2018 to then will be less, even with an identical start and SST3 response as the last cycle:
2012-2017, HadSST3 = 0.487
2006-2011, HadSST3 = 0.337~0.15C difference, iff SC24 ends as scheduled, and SC25 starts out the same as SC24 (not likely).
[2]”Will the twelve years from 1Jan2018 to 1Jan2030 be colder or warmer than the previous 12 year period, and by how much in degrees C, on average? Why?”
If you lined up SC24 and SC25 in parallel, and the solar data was exactly the same (which it can never be) over the exact same time period the difference in temperature at the end of SC25, ie if in 2030, would be the same offset as the offset between the 2008/9 solar min and the upcoming solar minimum, which we don’t know now and have to guess/predict. If I am right about the timing and effect of TSI we should see this cycle net offset to be on the order of +0.1C.
To answer your question more specifically, since 1Jan2018 is not registered on the solar minimum, one has to take into account the temperature change from then to the minimum, which might be about -0.1C, cancelling out the next subsequent net cycle gain of 0.1C, meaning a net zero change 2018-2030. That’s too iffy though for my taste, and so is computing an average that overlaps two solar cycles when the first one isn’t over.
We should not get ahead of this cycle end yet. For a better answer ask the question again after we know when the minimum has occurred.

Thank you Bob and others for your responses.
Bob, I published an article in the September 1, 2002 Calgary Herald that stated:
[excerpt]
“If [as we believe] solar activity is the main driver of surface temperature rather than CO2, we should begin the next cooling period by 2020 to 2030.”
I am now leaning towards cooling to start early in this range, possibly by about 2020 or even sooner. However, even after we have several decades of data, people will be debating this question – some say the cooling period has already started, circa 2007.
For the record, I have always relied on the UAH LT data as being the most reliable, and have less and less confidence in the surface temperature data, due to the many recent “adjustments”.
Q: Will the six years from 1Jan2018 to 1Jan2024 be colder or warmer than the previous 6 year period, and by how much in degrees C, on average? Why?
A: My guess is UAH LT will be about 0.1 to 0.2C net cooler, primarily because of low solar activity.
Q: Will the twelve years from 1Jan2018 to 1Jan2030 be colder or warmer than the previous 12 year period, and by how much in degrees C, on average? Why?
A: My guess is UAH LT will be about 0.2 to 0.4C net cooler, primarily because of low solar activity.
I have not done much recent work on this question, so am more interested in the opinions of those who have.

The next solar cycle is right around the corner so the intercycle cooling will be over in a year or two. It would be amazing to see a 0.2 to 0.4 drop by the end of the next cycle especially since it’s supposed to be as large or larger.
If the main TSI peak were early in the cycle, but it was on average as large as SC24, it might happen, but chances are it won’t cool that aggressively.

Bob,
It is important to know that SORCE/TSI is not quite correct and has been drifting upwards during all of SC24, as explained here http://www.leif.org/research/EUV-F107-and-TSI-CDR-HAO.pdf
My conclusion has just been verified by Tom Woods at LASP. He write in email to me:
“Hi Leif,
Indeed – now there are 3 analyses that have found similar trend for the SORCE TSI record.
Greg Kopp may not update SORCE TIM data product though, at least not until there is more overlap with the new TSIS-1 TIM observations.”
Unfortunately, LASP will be hanging on to the old [wrong] series for some time to come. It is hard to admit errors…

Leif, yes there’s that issue, and I will adjust when they adjust. Can’t wait for TSIS data.
A screengrab of both PMOD, 1979-2016, and SORCE 2003-2016, scaled almost perfectly:https://www.dropbox.com/s/myp73uxa92z9e79/PMOD%20v%20SORCE.JPG?dl=0
The change in degradation is visible towards the latter part of the cycle, taking PMOD as a reference. They correlated well after the minimum up to about the time of the battery problem, or was it the massive CME mid-summer 2012 that did it in?

That is true Leif. For this fit I used the solar minimum years 2007-9 for the 0.095 SORCE-PMOD offset. There are two main differences, the offset, and the scale. The scale shown is actually off by 0.05W, as its hard to get both together on the same chart like that with that 0.095 difference and have the thresholds line up.
Correction, those plots extend through Sep-2017.

@Allan Macrae- Greetings from the Big Mango (BKK). Here’s my guesstimate …
Q: Will the six years from 1Jan2018 to 1Jan2024 be colder or warmer than the previous 6 year period, and by how much in degrees C, on average? Why?
A: My guess is UAH LT will be 1.0 to 1.5 dg net cooler, primarily because of deep cold ocean upwelling with help from low solar activity.
Q: Will the twelve years from 1Jan2018 to 1Jan2030 be colder or warmer than the previous 12 year period, and by how much in degrees C, on average? Why?
A: My guess is UAH LT will 1.5 to 2.5 dgC net cooler, primarily because of deep cold ocean upwelling with help from low solar activity. ( and die-off of hot air spewing politicians and warmist alarmists, heh)
NB- the deep ocean is about 1.5 C. When this water surfaces and the air warms it up, for every 1 degree rise of SST the air temp will drop 4 C.
Sandy, Minister of Future

SORCE data went through at least 15 versions through to the battery problem.
Since Nov 2014 SORCE has been in its 17th version. According to the CERES site version 9 was in use in 2009, and there was a mention of version 15. No other versions were mentioned and I don’t have the version history from LASP.
I think they got it close to right during the last minimum after being too low since the start in 2003, and they kept it good until 2012-2013ish, and thereafter in hybrid mode it has drifted upward without compensation.
Just another interpretation.

Thank you interzonkomizar for your reply.
I flew through BKK for this first time recently, adding it to the long list of the great cities of the world where I have only seen the airport. I have spent considerable time elsewhere in Thailand, and hope to visit it again.
Thailand has a wonderful civilization, one of my favorites countries on the planet. The Thai government seems to have found a suitable balance between Civil Liberties and Rule of Law.
The over-reaching level of government interference in the lives of the citizens of most countries has become a huge problem. I will vote for any politician who promises “I will do a whole lot LESS for you”.
Some of my friends are so tired of government busybodies that they are leaving Canada when they retire, and vow to never return. I sympathize with them. Government have become a cancer in the Western world.
Best, Allan

You posted as I was writing. There could be another interpretation. Two things could’ve skewed it.
The solar magnetic field relationship to TSI and how TSI relates to v2 SN is different for each cycle, using PMOD, depicted below. A generalized TSI model or composite will therefore always be a partial compromise when based on a single SN based model curve, when applied to another solar cycle, and vice versa. These are true relationships as long as SNs weren’t used to tune PMOD.https://www.dropbox.com/s/kqw54vo8bgmkw4n/Figure%209.1.JPG?dl=0
The F10.7cm to TSI relationship for different cycles will also vary similarly to the corresponding cycle SN-TSI curves, meaning the exact correlation of a former cycle wouldn’t apply perfectly to the next.
During the declining phase of SC23 the F10.7cm-TSI phase difference was shorter than when activity was higher later as SC24 grew.
The use of annual numbers in your plots may also be a potential reason for the correlation changes, as larger sunspot groups in years post 2011 that occur in late months won’t see the corresponding TSI bump thereafter for 1-4 solar rotations, potentially into the following year’s TSI data. So the larger F10.7cm-TSI phase differences later in the cycle could’ve made it look worse than it is.
Perfect example: 2015 TSI was so far off the line compared to 2015 SSN. The 2014 SSN spike in Oct lead to the TSI spike in Feb/March 2015. The use of annual numbers obscured it.

Allan, this would make a good main topic. It reminds me of the old sea ice minimum predictions.
My own take is 2018-2024 will be fairly flat and continue the pause which appears now to have been reinstated.
The 2024-2030 period will likely see the AMO go negative and the return of more Arctic sea ice. This should lead to cooling in the NH and hence a drop in the global temperature.
The big question mark is the millennial cycle. We are probably somewhere near the peak. If we are still going up then that could counter some of the cooling. If we have started back down then the cooling should be enhanced. In any event its effect should be fairly minor over these short intervals.
Direct solar effects should have a small downward influence over this time while GHGs should have a small upward influence. Naturally, ENSO variability could make it difficult to tease out the real climate signal.

Thank your Richard M for your comments.
Re ENSO variability, recent major El Nino peaks occurred in 1983 (when air temperature was suppressed by strong volcanic activity), 1998 and 2016. Lesser air temperature peaks caused by ocean temperature variation occur an average of once in ~36 months.
I am surprised when analysts quickly dismiss the solar impact on climate because they cannot find a pretty correlation. I suggest that the underlying natural ~3-year oscillation in the Pacific Ocean, punctuated by major El Nino’s every ~15-20 years or so, make this correlation much more difficult to discern.

Willis says
“we don’t have either good sunspot data or good temperature data for the Maunder Minimum,so it’s hard to say anything for sure… it was a long time ago.”
There is very good geologic evidence for the cold temperature during the Maunder Minimum from 1650 to 1710.
1. The MM cooling shows up clearly in the CET records.
2. The MM cooling is well shown in the GISP2 ice core data.
3. The MM cooling marked by glacial moraines far down-valley from their present margins. They mark the coldest time since the Holocene warming.
4. The MM cooling is shown in the Sargasso Sea data.
5. The MM cooling is well documented in the written historical record.
and much more.

J. Peterson:
You asked Willis,
well I’m not Willis, and
I don’t get upset like Willis does,
when others disagree with him,
but I’ll risk getting him upset.

Richard, I don’t get upset when people disagree with me. That’s called “science”, it’s no problem in the slightest.
I do hit back twice as hard when people attack me rather than attacking my ideas.
Big difference.
Best to you and yours,
w.

Willis says
“we don’t have either good sunspot data or good temperature data for the Maunder Minimum, so it’s hard to say anything for sure… it was a long time ago.”
…
2. The MM cooling is well shown in the GISP2 ice core data.

Willis,
My GISP2 δ18O curve looks a bit different than this one. I like to make my own plots from original data, so I use the GISP2 measured data. Minze Stuiver, whose AMS lab made all of the GISP2 ice core measurements, is a friend of mine. and I got several thousand measured data points from him. I can plot δ18O for any time interval for the full length of the core.
I can’t seem to get this website to take graphs, but what I can tell you is that the cooling of the Maunder shows up very nicely in plots of the Stuiver data. The ice core temp data of Cuffy and Clow (replotted by Alley) very nicely confirms the δ18O data (although I haven’t plotted that data in the same detail as the δ18O data—I have his raw data but just haven’t plotted it in detail).
The CET also shows the cooling of the Maunder nicely. It confirms the cooling from about 1645 to 1710.
So how much cooler was the Maunder? A plot of CET December temperatures from 1859 to 2000+ shows ~1678 to be the 3rd coldest Dec of the entire record and between 1660 and 1670 there were three years within the 10th coldest months in the entire record. The span of temp decrease ranges from about 2 to 4 degrees.
Tree ring data from China show a pronounced Maunder cooling. I’m not sure how they wrung temp data out of the tree rings, but it does corroborate the ice and CET data.
Glaciers also provide a nice paleotemp temp record. Moraines of the Maunder period are the farthest downvalley since the Younger Dryas. Glaciers are controlled by both temp and precipitation, but summer temp seems to make the biggest difference. The glaciers tell us the Maunder was much colder than any other time in the late Holocene.
There is a lot of other geologic evidence showing the same thing—bottom line is that the Maunder was substantially colder than any other time since the late Pleistocene.

Thank you Don for all the information re solar impacts on climate.
I have not verified your points, but they are very interesting and agree with my prejudices.
I therefore must complement you on your excellent judgment.
Best personal regards, Allan 🙂

Willis,
My GISP2 δ18O curve looks a bit different than this one. I like to make my own plots from original data, so I use the GISP2 measured data. Minze Stuiver, whose AMS lab made all of the GISP2 ice core measurements, is a friend of mine. and I got several thousand measured data points from him. I can plot δ18O for any time interval for the full length of the core.

Thanks, Don. The source for my data is NOAA, as shown on the graph. If that is different from some gray version of the data I don’t know what to say. Perhaps you could suggest to Mr Stuiver that he properly archive his data so ordinary shlubs like myself could have access to it …

I can’t seem to get this website to take graphs, but what I can tell you is that the cooling of the Maunder shows up very nicely in plots of the Stuiver data.

Put the URL of the graph on a separate line, with only three letters after the period (e.g. “.jpg”, “.png”), and WordPress will do the rest.

The CET also shows the cooling of the Maunder nicely. It confirms the cooling from about 1645 to 1710.

Willis,
Let’s see if we can get this straightened out so we’re both looking at the same data!
“The source for my data is NOAA, as shown on the graph. If that is different from some gray version of the data I don’t know what to say. Perhaps you could suggest to Mr Stuiver that he properly archive his data so ordinary shlubs like myself could have access to it” …
I checked the NOAA data and it is not the same as the data set that I use. NOAA’s data is incomplete–they only have the 2-meter data set–mine is the continuous data set with many, many more data points. It has been archived for many years at the Univ of Wash. but may have been taken down. I can send it to you if you would like to have it.
The CET also shows the cooling of the Maunder nicely. It confirms the cooling from about 1645 to 1710.
Huh? “Again you must be using a gray version of the data. The CET data is here, and only goes back to 1659, not 1645.”
Yes, the CET instrumental data only goes back to 1659, but you may not be aware that Tony Brown (2011) has extended the record back to 1538 using historical records and attached it onto the instrumental record. While welding two different kinds of records is not the best of things to do, it is at least interesting. I don’t know what records Tony used and don’t recommend the extension as being considered part of the CET.
“Do I think it was colder during the Maunder Minimum? The problem I’ve always had with that, whether in the CET or the Lamb data, is that it is warmer at the end of the Maunder than in the middle. In the GISP data, on the other hand, it’s warmer than average in the middle. If solar variations were truly the cause, these seem unlikely.”
Yes, there is a curious warm spike in mid-Maunder, but that doesn’t negate the fact the Maunder as a whole was one of the coldest periods since the late Pleistocene. Yes, the end of the Maunder was warmer than the middle, but I don’t understand why that is a problem. It was also warmer at the beginning of the Maunder.
“In addition, look at the other minima (Sporer, Wolf, Dalton) in the GISP2 data or the Lamb data. There is no obvious sign of cooling during those times.”
Hmmm–not at all what I see in the GISP2 and CET. There is a strong cooling in the GISP2 and CET data during the Dalton. Climate during the Sporer seems to have been somewhat erratic. There is some cooling shown in the GISP2 data (but not was persistent as in the Maunder and Dalton). China was cold during the Sporer and the Baltic sea froze over.
The cooling during the Wolf is well shown in the GISP2 data set and is described as: ‘Wolf Minimum (1290-1320 AD) was a period of low sunspot numbers (SSNs) and TSI between about 1300 and 1320 AD. It occurred during the cold period that marked the end of the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) and the beginning of the Little Ice Age (LIA) about 1300 AD. The change from the warmth of the MWP to the cold of the LIA was abrupt and devastating, leading to the Great Famine from 1310 to 1322. The winter of 1309-1310 AD was exceptionally cold. The Thames River froze over and poor people were especially affected. The year 1315 AD was especially bad. Jean Desnouelles wrote at the time, “Exceedingly great rains descended from the heavens and they made huge and deep mud-pools on the land. Throughout nearly all of May, June, and August, the rains did not stop.” Corn, oats, and hay crops were beaten to the ground, August and September were cold, and ﬂoods swept away entire villages. Crop harvests in 1315 AD were a disaster, affecting an enormous area in northern Europe. In places, up to half of farmlands were eroded away, cold, wet weather prevented grain harvests, and fall plantings failed, triggering famines. In 1316 AD, spring rain continued, again impeding the sowing of grain crops, and harvests failed once again. Diseases increased, newborn and old people died of starvation, and multitudes scavenged anything edible. Whole communities disappeared and many farms were abandoned. The year 1316 was the worst for cereal crops in the entire Middle Ages. Cattle couldn’t be fed, hay wouldn’t dry and couldn’t be moved so it just rotted. Thousands of cattle froze during the bitterly cold winter of 1317e1318 and many others starved. The cold immobilized shipping. Rain in 1317e1318 continued through the summer and people suffered for another seven years.’
Does all this not show that the Wolf, Sporer, Maunder, and Dalton Minimums were cold periods?

Willis,
Let’s see if we can get this straightened out so we’re both looking at the same data!

“The source for my data is NOAA, as shown on the graph. If that is different from some gray version of the data I don’t know what to say. Perhaps you could suggest to Mr Stuiver that he properly archive his data so ordinary shlubs like myself could have access to it” …

I checked the NOAA data and it is not the same as the data set that I use. NOAA’s data is incomplete–they only have the 2-meter data set–mine is the continuous data set with many, many more data points. It has been archived for many years at the Univ of Wash. but may have been taken down. I can send it to you if you would like to have it.

The CET also shows the cooling of the Maunder nicely. It confirms the cooling from about 1645 to 1710.

Huh? “Again you must be using a gray version of the data. The CET data is here, and only goes back to 1659, not 1645.”

Yes, the CET instrumental data only goes back to 1659, but you may not be aware that Tony Brown (2011) has extended the record back to 1538 using historical records and attached it onto the instrumental record. While welding two different kinds of records is not the best of things to do, it is at least interesting. I don’t know what records Tony used and don’t recommend the extension as being considered part of the CET.

I’m aware that Mr. Brown extended the CET. However, I’m not all that impressed with the CET in general. It is a spliced, averaged dataset. Up to 1722 there were gaps in the records which were infilled from the data from Utrecht, which is 300 miles (500 km) from London. So anything before that, which includes all of the Maunder Minimum, is suspect.
Next, the CET is spliced using different stations in 1772, 1773, 1777, 1786, 1789, 1812, 1826, 1853, 1878, 1931, and 1959. Finally, between 1723 and 1760, the temperatures were mostly not taken outdoors, but in unheated rooms. See the official description of the dataset here.
As a result, using the CET to show a comparison between the Maunder Minimum in the late 1600s – early 1700s with later CET is … well … sketchy.
“Do I think it was colder during the Maunder Minimum? The problem I’ve always had with that, whether in the CET or the Lamb data, is that it is warmer at the end of the Maunder than in the middle. In the GISP data, on the other hand, it’s warmer than average in the middle. If solar variations were truly the cause, these seem unlikely.”

Yes, there is a curious warm spike in mid-Maunder, but that doesn’t negate the fact the Maunder as a whole was one of the coldest periods since the late Pleistocene.

Not according to the GISP2 data from your friend at the U of W, see the figure above.

Yes, the end of the Maunder was warmer than the middle, but I don’t understand why that is a problem. It was also warmer at the beginning of the Maunder.

Same objection.

“In addition, look at the other minima (Sporer, Wolf, Dalton) in the GISP2 data or the Lamb data. There is no obvious sign of cooling during those times.”

Hmmm–not at all what I see in the GISP2 and CET. There is a strong cooling in the GISP2 and CET data during the Dalton. Climate during the Sporer seems to have been somewhat erratic. There is some cooling shown in the GISP2 data (but not was persistent as in the Maunder and Dalton). China was cold during the Sporer and the Baltic sea froze over.

According to the GISP2 data you recommended, there is indeed cooling during the Wolf minimum. However, on average the period was warmer than the overall average. Nor is any one year particularly cool during the Wolf Minimum. It also contains one of the warmest years in the entire record … along with a warm year in the Sporer Minimum.

Does all this not show that the Wolf, Sporer, Maunder, and Dalton Minimums were cold periods?

Nope. Not according to the GISP2 dataset you recommended it doesn’t. Three of the four were warmer than the overall average.
Best regards,
w.

Willis,
It’s a bit late and I need to get some sleep for a busy day tomorrow so I can’t fully respond now. More later.
Thanks for the curve from the complete data. Curiously, my curves don’t look like your curves (which must be correct). If we’re both using the same data, why the difference? My curves are plotted on Excel so I don’t understand why we’re not getting similar results. I’ll send you some of my curves tomorrow and perhaps you can figure out why they are different. My vertical axis is the value for 18O from the data; yours is standard deviation. I’m curious what you get if we plot the same vertical axis units.
I’d like to get this straightened out because I just can’t accept the idea that the largest glacial advance since the Pleistocene occurred when the climate was “warmer than the overall average.” The glaciers were way down-valley from the present. You can see my dilemma!
My best to you, as always,
Don

Willis,
Thanks for your patience in getting this straightened out. Your conclusion that “this does NOT show the Maunder Minimum as being unusual in any way. In fact, three of the four “grand sunspot minima”, including the Maunder Minimum, were warmer than the overall average” is in direct contradiction to a huge mass of data that says the Maunder was a time of extreme cold, so it’s important to get it right. I have no doubt that your numbers are correct, but why are they in such direct conflict with what we know happened during the Maunder and why is my GISP2 curve different than yours?
My curves show the δ18O values of the Stuiver data on the vertical axis—yours show standard deviation. Perhaps a way to get us on the same page would be if you would plot the δ18O values of the Stuiver data on the vertical axis and see if we get the same curve. Assuming we do, we could then compare it to your standard deviation curve and see what the differences are.
Thanks for your notes on the CET—I wasn’t aware of the splices. I’ve compared the CET with the GISP2 temperatures and they match pretty well. Would be interesting to delete the splices and see what it looks like.
Best to you,
Don

Willis writes:
“Do I think it was colder during the Maunder Minimum? The problem I’ve always had with that, whether in the CET or the Lamb data, is that it is warmer at the end of the Maunder than in the middle. In the GISP data, on the other hand, it’s warmer than average in the middle. If solar variations were truly the cause, these seem unlikely.”
Well it would get warmer at the end of a cold bit wouldn’t it, else it wouldn’t be the end of the cold bit. Believe it or not it was also warmer before the cold bit, like in the 1650’s and much of the 1660’s.
Though the increased negative North Atlantic Oscillation driving the cold bit, is also driving the warm bit by Greenland.https://media.springernature.com/m685/springer-static/image/art%3A10.1038%2Fs41598-017-13246-x/MediaObjects/41598_2017_13246_Fig2_HTML.jpg

A few thoughts – OT a bit but not really:
The Equatorial Pacific Ocean has a natural temperature cycle averaging about 36 months peak-to-peak.
Equatorial average air temperature and humidity follow Equatorial Pacific Ocean temperature – about 3 months after the Nino34 SST Anomaly and about 5 months after the East Equatorial Upper Ocean Temperature Anomaly.
Global average air temperature follows Equatorial average air temperature and humidity about 1 month later.
The rate of change atmospheric dCO2/dt varies ~contemporaneously with global average air temperature, and its integral the atmospheric CO2 trend lags the air temperature trend by ~9 months.
Here is the relationship between the ~9-month CO2 lag and the average 36-month cycle in the Equatorial Pacific.
Observations and Conclusions:
I proved in 2008 that dCO2/dt varies ~contemporaneously with global temperature, and its integral CO2 lags temperature by ~9 months.
The integral of the sine curve lags the sine curve by 90 degrees, which equals 1/4 of the 360 degree full cycle.
CO2 lags temperature by about 9 months, therefore this “short” cycle time is about 36 months.
Hypothesis: This approx. 36 month cycle is the Equatorial Pacific -> Global Temperature cycle.
Conclusion: Based on UAH LT peaks, the mean cycle is 36.3 months and the lag is 9.1 months vs the 9 months in my 2008 icecap.us paper.https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1658389180905304&set=a.1012901982120697.1073741826.100002027142240&type=3&theater
Reference:http://icecap.us/images/uploads/CO2vsTMacRae.pdf
Spreadsheet athttp://icecap.us/images/uploads/CO2vsTMacRaeFig5b.xls

ralfellis wrote on March 18, 2018 at 11:40 am
“Allan – what would generate a temperature cycle, every two years instead if annually, as per your graph? Not really seen that before.”
Allan replied:
“The following paragraph is pure speculation – treat it with “a ton of salt”:
There is an apparent natural oscillation in Pacific equatorial sea surface temperatures which is (I think) about 3 years (36 months) rather than 2 years, and that is probably related to the ~9-month delay of CO2 after temperature (i,e. a 1/4 cycle delay). Frankly I haven’t given this much thought, so this paragraph is purely speculative.”
Ralf, if you are reading this post – my above post provides the proof to my prior speculation.
“The integral of the sine curve lags the sine curve by 90 degrees, which equals 1/4 of the 360 degree full cycle. CO2 lags temperature by about 9 months, therefore this “short” cycle time is about 36 months.
Hypothesis: This approx. 36 month cycle is the Equatorial Pacific -> Global Temperature cycle.”
(aka ENSO)
I suppose everyone else remembers this basic calculus, but I had to go back and prove it to myself. It has only been 50 years since I took calculus, so that is my excuse. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.
Instead of getting out the willow branch and flogging my back, I’m going to have a glass of Scotch and go to bed. “A drop of water to release the serpents…” … Aaaaahh! 🙂
___________________________________________________
Confíteor Deo omnipoténti
et vobis, fratres,
quia peccávi nimis
cogitatióne, verbo,
ópere et omissióne:
mea culpa, mea culpa,
mea máxima culpa.
Ideo precor beátam Maríam semper vírginem,
omnes angelos et sanctos,
et vos, fratres,
oráre pro me ad Dóminum Deum nostrum.
I confess to almighty God
and to you, my brothers and sisters,
that I have greatly sinned,
in my thoughts and in my words,
in what I have done and in what I have failed to do,
through my fault, through my fault,
through my most grievous fault;
therefore I ask blessed Mary ever-Virgin,
all the Angels and Saints,
and you, my brothers and sisters,
to pray for me to the Lord our God.

To the extent that most Thermometers measuring whether there is global or warming or not are located next to airplane runways or concrete/asphalt parking lots it does not matter if only 1% of USA is roads. The asphalt and concrete next to the thermometers has caused reported temps to increase.

If you were truly so well discerning you would realize Leif nor Willis are at the stage of having a practical working knowledge yet of in terms of usefully applying solar activity indices to weather and climate on a daily to decadal scale, which is not an insult. Its not easy. If they did they would have seen the 2015/16 ENSO coming and the subsequent cooloff ahead of time and been among the first to predict those events.
Instead I happen to be the guy that did both those things. It is simply a matter of fact.

If you were truly so well discerning you would realize Leif nor Willis are at the stage of having a practical working knowledge yet of in terms of usefully applying solar activity indices to weather and climate on a daily to decadal scale
Neither has anybody else, including you [in spite of your claim]. ‘Applying solar indices’ to ‘weather and climate’ is just curve fitting with no physical understanding and therefore has little or no predictive power. There are many people who claim such ability [with differing results, BTW] but, again, without any physical understanding and quantitative predictions. In the forecasting business there is the concept of ‘actionable intelligence’; that is: the prediction must be so strong that you can reasonably take action [which always has a cost] on it. Saying that there is 1% chance of an earthquake tomorrow is not good enough to order mandatory evacuation of, say, a million people. A 90% chance might be enough. Where the border between 1% and 90% lies depends on the cost of the action.

usefully applying solar activity indices to weather and climate on a daily to decadal scale
The raw numbers make such an application very simple — a 1.5 watt variation between a quiet sun and an active one is not enough to make a significant climate effect. There’s no credible evidence for other significant effects often put forward like UV & cosmic rays, etc, etc.

Mine is a physical understanding, and your stating that it isn’t is a lie. I have demonstrated very good skill and you have not. That is the truth.
The physical understanding is 1au TSI energy under clear skies operates within S-B cumulatively, incrementally, and this is the important part you all miss completely. The ongoing solar energy absorbed and released by the ocean is analogous to making money. If you earn enough over expenses you accumulate, if not you fall behind. My solar method is like a cash-flow breakeven analysis, based on the break-even warming threshold I first established as 120 sfu in F10.cm flux, then applied to other solar indices. Everything I did has been real-world tested successfully.
The fact is as I have demonstrated repeatedly it is the small TSI variations incrementally adding more or less electromagnetic energy within the ~1.5W variation into the ocean, converting it to sensible heat that upwells, surfaces, heating the air, becoming the wind. The entire solar-climate process repeats in a self-organizing manner around solar cycle activity in predictable ways as shown in my Fig 18 solar-climate cross correlations.
Leif Svalgaard has demonstrated no such skill and is in no position to claim otherwise, or that I don’t.

KLohrn
I do solar climate work now, but once I was an all conference football player and team captain who always played against guys who were bigger and supposedly better than me. I played offense and defense, all the special teams, etc. If someone wants to play rough, I can do that. Intellectually too.

It is significant over time
Perhaps not even that.
Over the life of the Earth the Sun’s output [TSI] has increased some 30%, yet the temperature of the Earth has hardly changed. In fact, probably decreased over time over the billions of years since.

“Over the life of the Earth the Sun’s output [TSI] has increased some 30%, yet the temperature of the Earth has hardly changed. In fact, probably decreased over time over the billions of years since.”
Pure conjecture based on pure conjuncture all the way down the rabbit hole…
We no facts about solar activity a billions years ago.

We no facts about solar activity a billions years ago.
The solar wind was probable hundreds of times stronger than today, but that is not what matters. As you say, it is TSI that is the driver. And TSI was 30% lower back then or some 400 W/m2. So with a sensitivity of 0.05 K/W, the earth would have been 20 degrees colder, yet we know from the geological evidence that it was not. It was probably warmer than today.
See e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faint_young_Sun_paradox

If you were truly so well discerning you would realize Leif nor Willis are at the stage of having a practical working knowledge yet of in terms of usefully applying solar activity indices to weather and climate on a daily to decadal scale, which is not an insult. Its not easy. If they did they would have seen the 2015/16 ENSO coming and the subsequent cooloff ahead of time and been among the first to predict those events.
Instead I happen to be the guy that did both those things. It is simply a matter of fact.

A citation to a dated forecast showing that you actually were able to foresee the 2015/16 ENSO and how far in advance you saw it coming would do wonders for your credibility … or not …
w.
PS—Saying that there will be a “cooloff” following an ENSO event is hardly a forecast …

I don’t have to worry about my credibility on this subject in spite of whatever is said. I’ll be nice too.
Willis the info you’re looking for is in my poster.
I generally don’t keep track of all my comments across the blogs, but if you recall there were many instances of my mentioning the progression of my work with accompanying predictions 2014-on, the 120 sfu and 1361.25W solar warming thresholds for example.
In my view I’ve already established my credibility on the matters I speak of with the accuracy of my predictions, but have yet to see a single person indicate they fully get what I’ve done, and part of that is my own fault for not communicating more, but there were reasons for that.
The recent LASP sun-climate symposium gave me an opportunity to consolidate my work in a poster and start talking about it with others in the field. I’m working on a blog article about it which will include spreadsheet(s). The ideas and math are simple, but deserve more explanation than what’s in the poster, which is coming. From there it’ll be on to journal articles. There’s more science work to do on top of it.The ocean accumulates absorbed solar energy incrementally. There are multiple applications to this work including what you do in breaking down daily evaporation. The idea is right now because of insufficient TSI energy over time since the SC24 TSI maximum, there is less daily tropical evaporation leading to drought in the US right now and through the solar minimum. I specifically warned of the worsening drought a few months ago and in the spring of 2017 here at WUWT, before it was so apparent as it is now.https://dsx.weather.com/util/image/map/pacglobsat_1280x720.jpg
Under the present low TSI low evaporation conditions, the SW US skies are clear, increasing UVI, driving high daytime temperatures, further dessicating the ground, leading to more drought. It’s a system.http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/data/jpg/20180424/20180424_usdm.jpg
The work I do touches all aspects of climate change, and now I’m working on getting you all to understand the first most important thing, the accumulative warming/cooling effect of small 1 au TSI variations over time.
I would ask today to take some time to read and digest it all. It’s finally nice here and I have yard work.
I intend to have this article ready within a week or two, depending on how fast my outside work gets done, and will then be happy to answer questions.

I don’t have to worry about my credibility on this subject in spite of whatever is said. I’ll be nice too.
Willis the info you’re looking for is in my poster.

Bob, the date on that poster is 15 April 2018 … which makes predicting the 2016/17 El Nino kinda easy.

I generally don’t keep track of all my comments across the blogs, but if you recall there were many instances of my mentioning the progression of my work with accompanying predictions 2014-on, the 120 sfu and 1361.25W solar warming thresholds for example.

No, I don’t recall them. Remember that I’m writing, reading, and commenting on dozens of posts every single week of the year.
However, if you can predict ENSOs a year or more out, as far as I know, you’d be the first person in the world to do so … so what is your current prediction for the timing of the next ENSO event?
Best regards,
w.

“Bob, the date on that poster is 15 April 2018 … which makes predicting the 2016/17 El Nino kinda easy.”
If you had read what I wrote you would know when I made the prediction, June 23, 2014.
The prediction I made about the then 2014/15 ENSO is located in the middle of page 1. It is one of my blog comments I do have bookmarked:

“Paul says:
June 23, 2014 at 6:00 am
“There’s still a possibility the 2014/15 El Niño could die even though it had so much promise just a few months ago.”
So isn’t that just another sign of climate change?
****************************************************************************************************************
“Solar change” is your sign. Climate change comes from solar changes. Solar activity ramped up late last year and has since tapered off. The “recharge” of the oceans from that rampup is now dissipating. If and only if there is another spike in solar activity this year will there be an El Nino. Since NOAA/NASA has declared cycle 24 to have peaked or is peaking, the chances for another spike are possible but the odds for it are decreasing as time goes on. That said, the Sun is full of surprises.”

I did not predict the next peak of sunspot activity and that is not the point. The point is here I realized that only another sunspot spike would drive TSI high again to drive the ENSO back up again, only after F10.7cm rose above the 120 sfu warming line, which I had just determined only months before.
The cooling prediction also came in the form of a blog post prediction on Dr. Spencer’s site in Dec 2015, also noted in the poster. I made it here too a few times.
I think that because at the time I didn’t know where this was all going for me I didn’t make the predictions in the way I would now. Now that I’m through the learning curve ‘discovery’ process, I intend to make future predictions available on my upcoming website, and make them better specified.
No one else saw either of those two things coming.
The discovery and application of the solar warming threshold by itself, that was tested and verified, would’ve stood on its own in the poster even without those two predictions. My warming threshold works very well. So even if you were predisposed to pan my two blog post predictions, my main warming/cooling threshold worked as described perfectly, across the five solar cycles I first developed and tested it on.
The purpose of the two blog predictions is to demonstrate I made the right judgements, and they reinforce the threshold work, which worked perfectly.
“so what is your current prediction for the timing of the next ENSO event?”
Right around the corner, starting just before the cycle minimum, as it did prior to the last minimum:https://www.dropbox.com/s/srmhgu0fkmdpe8t/Figure%2017.1.JPG?dl=0
Clear(er) sky equatorial insolation will start it and the rise in new cycle TSI will reinforce it.
The timing depends on the end of the solar cycle. I hope you appreciate that I depend on others for sunspot forecasts, and what happens depends on a bit of an unknown, how the sun will exactly develop over time, which limits the ability to be more specific.
High insolation under low TSI low evaporation is mighty effective at warming. Top of cycle TSI makes it happen faster and deeper.
We can talk about this again some other time.

That is just another unverified and unverifiable theory so anything said of it is speculative.
No, that is the result of the very successful stellar evolution theory, backed up by observations of thousands of stars.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_evolution
If you begin to claim that the theory is nonsense, all further discussion stops.

If they did they would have seen the 2015/16 ENSO coming and the subsequent cooloff ahead of time and been among the first to predict those events.
Instead I happen to be the guy that did both those things. It is simply a matter of fact.

So I asked him for verification. He pointed me to a poster from 2018. I said “Whaaa”?
Here’s the response:
Bob Weber April 30, 2018 at 5:23 pm

If you had read what I wrote you would know when I made the prediction, June 23, 2014.
The prediction I made about the then 2014/15 ENSO is located in the middle of page 1. It is one of my blog comments I do have bookmarked:

Gosh … here I was, looking for a prediction of the 2015/2016 El Nino … but no, you were talking about some mythical ENSO event in 2014/2015 … no wonder I couldn’t find it. You’ve changed the goalposts from 2015/2016 to 2014/2015.
But setting that aside, here’s your prediction:

“Paul says:
June 23, 2014 at 6:00 am
“There’s still a possibility the 2014/15 El Niño could die even though it had so much promise just a few months ago.”
So isn’t that just another sign of climate change?
****************************************************************************************************************
“Solar change” is your sign. Climate change comes from solar changes. Solar activity ramped up late last year and has since tapered off. The “recharge” of the oceans from that rampup is now dissipating. If and only if there is another spike in solar activity this year will there be an El Nino. Since NOAA/NASA has declared cycle 24 to have peaked or is peaking, the chances for another spike are possible but the odds for it are decreasing as time goes on. That said, the Sun is full of surprises.”

Now, just hang on.
First, in June of 2014, the El Nino Index was NEUTRAL, and there was no putative “2014/2015 El Nino” in sight. If it were to occur it would have already started by June, the signs would be there. Typically, the ONI starts ramping up a year before a strong El Nino. Since the ONI was neutral, the odds of an El Nino in 2014/2015 were slim.http://ggweather.com/enso/oni.png
Next, you claimed that you predicted an El Nino … but in fact, you predicted that an El Nino would NOT happen, and you did it midyear when the Oceanic Nino Index was neutral … and you are claiming success based on that?
There have been eight strong El Ninos in the last 58 years, meaning the odds of there not being an El Nino in any random year are about 50 / 58 = about 85%. So … you predicted something would not occur, with an 85% chance of not occurring, and ONI evidence that it wasn’t occurring … and you claim success?
Man, you’re trying to out-Corbyn Piers Corbyn, who famously predicted a 50% chance of a typhoon in the Pacific, and claimed success when no typhoon formed …
Come back when you’ve actually predicted an El Nino a year in advance and you’ll have something. Until then, I’m sorry, but that don’t impress me much.
w.

Powerful eruptions expelled mass from our unstable sun early on. Before that it was 10 percent more massive and hotter, allowing Mars to have liquid water. Mass released from the sun’s core? Interesting ideas.

You are truly a distortion artist Willis. You are always looking for ways to be clever w/o substance. The quick rush of a back stab – you’re like a crack addict – you can’t wait for the chance to stab someone in the back. I’m betting that what I’m about to say will go in one ear and out the other, because you’re just too proud.

“The 2014/15 El Niño – Part 11 – Is the El Niño Dying?
Bob Tisdale / June 23, 2014
There’s still a possibility the 2014/15 El Niño could die even though it had so much promise just a few months ago. In this post, we’ll compare a few indicators now to where they were 2 months ago at the start of the El Niño enthusiasm.”

“You’ve changed the goalposts from 2015/2016 to 2014/2015.”
I have changed no goal posts. The discussion started then, its that simple. You distorted the meaning of what was clearly said in sequence in my poster. That is directly lying about my work, right off the bat.“Next, you claimed that you predicted an El Nino … but in fact, you predicted that an El Nino would NOT happen, and you did it midyear when the Oceanic Nino Index was neutral … and you are claiming success based on that?”
Let’s clue in real close on this big lie here:” but in fact, you predicted that an El Nino would NOT happen, “
You lied by omitting my qualifier, “unless there is another spike in solar activity.” AND AND the big one, you did not follow your own advice to everyone, which is quoting the exact words I used. You misquoted me and put what I said out of context. That is the exact kind of thing you complain about in others, hypocrite!“Now, just hang on.
First, in June of 2014, the El Nino Index was NEUTRAL, and there was no putative “2014/2015 El Nino” in sight. If it were to occur it would have already started by June, the signs would be there. Typically, the ONI starts ramping up a year before a strong El Nino. Since the ONI was neutral, the odds of an El Nino in 2014/2015 were slim.”
You’re going to have to explain that to Bob Tisdale who had written the 11th article on your supposedly non-existent ENSO development when I made my prediction, and maybe you can ask him why he was writing about something you say wasn’t there. I will look for you to be a smart-aleck to him for it too.
So right here in a few short sentences you have distorted the meaning of what I said, and essentially you indirectly called Bob Tisdale out for having some nerve to write about what you said was non-existent.
The 2014/15 ENSO developed into the 2015/16 ENSO, and if you had actually paid attention to Tisdale’s posts you’d know that, but no you’re too busy telling everyone the way it is or isn’t to learn from others.“Man, you’re trying to out-Corbyn Piers Corbyn, who famously predicted a 50% chance of a typhoon in the Pacific, and claimed success when no typhoon formed …
Come back when you’ve actually predicted an El Nino a year in advance and you’ll have something. Until then, I’m sorry, but that don’t impress me much.”
Piers Corbyn calls you a churlish charlatan. Everything you did here to me proves it more.
BTW you can’t do simple math. My prediction was made more than one year prior to the ENSO peak!“I’m sorry, but that don’t impress me much.”
It is you that is unimpressive, well, except your ego. Very impressive ego that is too… My my what a big oversized ego from someone so unencumbered by truth or a practical knowledge of the sun-climate.
You lied shamelessly here. I can see you get a big rush from GETTING AWAY WITH IT. Not with me.
Of course most of the smarter people here have already seen through you too, and they’ve said so, and they’ll keep right on saying it as will I as long as you keep it up.
Go on big ego, flail away. I know all you do is leave people with the “impression” you are right all the time, but there is little substance there with you – too much ego, and your constant lies are so unimpressive, and really, you should take this to heart – it really takes away from the good you do otherwise.
Willis Eschenbach is a serial liar and I just proved it again. Go on Willis, do it again!!!!
Javier is right about you, you are not a person who acts on good faith as others do.

You are truly a distortion artist WE. You are always looking for ways to be clever w/o substance. The quick rush of a back stab – you’re like a crack addict – you can’t wait for the chance to stab someone in the back. I’m betting that what I’m about to say will go in one ear and out the other, because you’re just too proud.

“The 2014/15 El Niño – Part 11 – Is the El Niño Dying?
Bob Tisdale / June 23, 2014
There’s still a possibility the 2014/15 El Niño could die even though it had so much promise just a few months ago. In this post, we’ll compare a few indicators now to where they were 2 months ago at the start of the El Niño enthusiasm.”

“You’ve changed the goalposts from 2015/2016 to 2014/2015.”
I have changed no goal posts. The discussion started then, its that simple. You distorted the meaning of what was clearly said in sequence in my poster. That is directly laying about my work, right off the bat.“Next, you claimed that you predicted an El Nino … but in fact, you predicted that an El Nino would NOT happen, and you did it midyear when the Oceanic Nino Index was neutral … and you are claiming success based on that?”
Let’s clue in real close on this big lye here:” but in fact, you predicted that an El Nino would NOT happen, “
You lyed by omitting my qualifier, “unless there is another spike in solar activity.” AND AND the big one, you did not follow your own advice to everyone, which is quoting the exact words I used. You misquoted me and put what I said out of context. That is the exact kind of thing you complain about in others, hypocrite!“Now, just hang on.
First, in June of 2014, the El Nino Index was NEUTRAL, and there was no putative “2014/2015 El Nino” in sight. If it were to occur it would have already started by June, the signs would be there. Typically, the ONI starts ramping up a year before a strong El Nino. Since the ONI was neutral, the odds of an El Nino in 2014/2015 were slim.”
You’re going to have to explain that to Bob Tisdale who had written the 11th article on your supposedly non-existent ENSO development when I made my prediction, and maybe you can ask him why he was writing about something you say wasn’t there. I will look for you to be a smart-aleck to him for it too.
So right here in a few short sentences you have distorted the meaning of what I said, and essentially you indirectly called Bob Tisdale out for having some nerve to write about what you said was non-existent.
The 2014/15 ENSO developed into the 2015/16 ENSO, and if you had actually paid attention to Tisdale’s posts you’d know that, but no you’re too busy telling everyone the way it is or isn’t to learn from others.“Man, you’re trying to out-Corbin Piers Corbin, who famously predicted a 50% chance of a typhoon in the Pacific, and claimed success when no typhoon formed …
Come back when you’ve actually predicted an El Nino a year in advance and you’ll have something. Until then, I’m sorry, but that don’t impress me much.”
Piers calls you a churlish charlatan. Everything you did here to me proves it more.
BTW you can’t do simple math. My prediction was made more than one year prior to the ENSO peak!“I’m sorry, but that don’t impress me much.”
It is you that is unimpressive, well, except your ego. Very impressive ego that is too… My my what a big oversized ego from someone so unencumbered by truth or a practical knowledge of the sun-climate.
You lyd shamelessly here. I can see you get a big rush from GETTING AWAY WITH IT. Not with me.
Of course most of the smarter people here have already seen through you too, and they’ve said so, and they’ll keep right on saying it as will I as long as you keep it up.
Go on big ego, flail away. I know all you do is leave people with the “impression” you are right all the time, but there is little substance there with you – too much ego, and your constant lies are so unimpressive, and really, you should take this to heart – it really takes away from the good you do otherwise.
WE is a serial lyre and I just proved it again. Go on do it again!!!!
Javier is right, you are not a person who acts on good faith as others do.

Sorry, Bob, but there were too many ad hominem attacks, insults, and general nastiness in your comment for me to pick it up, even if I were wearing welder’s gloves.
You’ll have to boast to someone else about your wonderfully prescient El Nino predictions, you’ve just burnt your bridges with me.
w.

“The point is here I realized that only another sunspot spike would drive TSI high again to drive the ENSO back up again, only after F10.7cm rose above the 120 sfu warming line, which I had just determined only months before.”
Piers gets that backwards too, El Nino increases during weaker solar states.

Solar minimum effects like cool summers in 2009 plus declining AMO plus no extreme super El Nino this time will make the Global Warming crowd truly distrusted by the general population and make its political protagonists run silent.

Willis,
Here is a historical description of the Maunder climate, one among several thousand. It is an example of why your conclusion that ““this does NOT show the Maunder Minimum as being unusual in any way. In fact, three of the four “grand sunspot minima”, including the Maunder Minimum, were warmer than the overall average” is so at odds with what we know about the Maunder climate and why it is so important that we resolve the discrepancy.
“Between 1680 and 1730, the coldest cycle of the Little Ice Age, temperatures plummeted, the growing season in England was about 5 weeks shorter than it was during the 20th century. The number of days with winter snow on the ground in Britain and the Netherlands rose to between 20 and 30, as opposed to 2 to 10 days through most of the 20th century.
The winter of 1683-84 was so cold that the ground froze to a depth of more than a meter in parts of SW England and belts of sea ice appeared along the coast of SE England and northern France. The ice lay 30-40 km offshore along parts of the Dutch coast. Many harbors were so choked with ice that shipping halted throughout the North Sea.
Conditions around Iceland were now exceptionally severe. Sea ice often blocked the Denmark Strait throughout the summer. In 1695, ice surrounded the entire coast of Iceland for much of the year, halting all ship traffic. The inshore cod fishery of the Faeroe Islands failed completely as the sea surface temperatures of the surrounding ocean became 5 degrees C cooler than today.
The effects of colder Little Ice Age climate were felt over enormous areas, not just Europe, but all over the world.” (Fagan, 2001)
In addition to all of this, glaciers all over the world extended far downvalley and pollen from peat bogs showed marked changes in vegetation.
Best regards,
Don

Leif,
There are 2-3,000 publications on the LIA climate, including many historical accounts (like the one above), many glacial studies, GiSP2 (if Willis and I can get squared away), pollen studies of vegetation changes, lowering of freezing levels in mts., changes in ocean sediments (Sargasso Sea), and much more. I think we can say with a high degree of certainty that the Maunder was a deep cooling.
Best regards,
Don

There are 2-3,000 publications on the LIA climate,
The LIA began long before the Maunder Minimum and lasted long after, so it is probably not quite kosher to associate the LIA with the Maunder Minimum per se.

Leif,
Of course–I didn’t imply that. I haven’t gone thru 3,000 papers to see which are about the Maunder and which are about other cold periods in the LIA! The point is that in those thousands of papers is a mountain of finite evidence that the Maunder was cold.

mountain of finite evidence that the Maunder was cold
As were several centuries on either side of the Maunder.
You try to make it seem that the low solar activity during the Maunder was the reason that the Maunder was cold [and if not you, then many, many others]. There would have been evidence for that if ONLY the Maunder had been cold, but it wasn’t the sole cold snap during the LIA.
Now I would expect an intellectually honest person to declare that he did not imply that there is a mountain of evidence that low solar activity was the reason for the cold Maunder.
What say you?

mountain of finite evidence that the Maunder was cold
As were several centuries on either side of the Maunder. You try to make it seem that the low solar activity during the Maunder was the reason that the Maunder was cold I DIDN’T SAY THAT AND THAT IS NOT THE POINT OF THIS DISCUSS–WHICH IS WHETHER OR NOT THE MAUNDER WAS COLD.
[and if not you, then many, many others]. There would have been evidence for that if ONLY the Maunder had been cold, but it wasn’t the sole cold snap during the LIA. OF COURSE NOT–NO ONE IS SAY THAT IS WAS.
Now I would expect an intellectually honest person to declare that he did not imply that there is a mountain of evidence that low solar activity was the reason for the cold Maunder. I DIDN’T SAY THAT–IT’S NOT THE POINT OF DISCUSSION! THAT’S A TOTALLY DIFFERENT ISSUE. THE POINT HERE IS–WAS THE MAUNDER COLD (FOR ANY REASON).
What say you?
C’mon Leif–you’re twisting my words into things that I didn’t say and straying from the main point here–that the Maunder was cold. That’s the issue we’re discussing–we’re not saying anything about the other cold periods in the LIA, we’re talking specifically about just the Maunder–was it cold or not? The number of papers published is irrelevant–it’s the CONTENT of those papers that is important. Can you read the except from Fagan (2001) that I posted earlier about specific dates in the later 1600s within the Maunder and still deny that it was cold? I can give you another hundred publications citing the same kind of evidence that 1650-1710 was REALLY cold! Then there is the strong advance of glaciers that extended far downvalley. Glaciers don’t lie and certainly don’t advance during warm periods. Can you give me any concrete evidence that the Maunder was NOT cold?
With best regards,
Don

we’re talking specifically about just the Maunder–was it cold or not?
If it were or not is of little interest if it were not for the implied assumption that it was caused by low solar activity. So, do you think so or not?

you know this is irrelevant!
Not at all. You used the argument that 3000 papers support a cold Maunder.
I point out that the number of papers is not an argument for solid support, hence should not be used.

“we’re talking specifically about just the Maunder–was it cold or not?
If it were or not is of little interest if it were not for the implied assumption that it was caused by low solar activity. So, do you think so or not?”
You’re missing the point, Leif–we’re just talking about whether or not the Maunder was cold because of Willis’s assertion that it wasn’t. That’s all we’re talking about! What caused the cold climate is altogether another issue that we’re not concerned with here. Was the Maunder cold? Yes, indeed it was, especially in the late 1600s. Do you know of any evidence that it wasn’t?
What I think about solar activity is NOT the issue here.

What I think about solar activity is NOT the issue here.
You are just evading the important point: why was it cold?
Why was it special [if it even was]?
And you don’t seem to have the cohones to go there…

you know this is irrelevant!
Not at all. You used the argument that 3000 papers support a cold Maunder. NO, NO, NO I DID NOT!! WHAT I SAID WAS THAT THE EVIDENCE IN THOUSANDS OF PAPERS WAS CONCLUSIVE!
I point out that the number of papers is not an argument for solid support, hence should not be used. WE AGREE–THE NUMBER OF PAPERS IS IRELEVANT! SO LET’S MOVE ON.
Leif–as I have already said (several times) the number of papers is irrelevant–it’s the EVIDENCE in the papers that I’m talking about, not the number of papers. As I have asked several times–do you know of any credible EVIDENCE that the Maunder was not cold? I don’t know of any. If you do, tell me what the evidence is.
I enjoy discussing scientific issues, but we seem to be wasting time talking about irrelevant stuff. Let’s get back to scientific stuff!
With best regards,
Don

do you know of any credible EVIDENCE that the Maunder was not cold?
Nobody is disputing that the Maunder was cold. The question is whether it was especially cold compared to all the other cold times during the five hundred year log LIA, and if so, what made it so special.

“we’re talking specifically about just the Maunder–was it cold or not?

If it were or not is of little interest if it were not for the implied assumption that it was caused by low solar activity. So, do you think so or not?”

You’re missing the point, Leif–we’re just talking about whether or not the Maunder was cold because of Willis’s assertion that it wasn’t.

Whoa there, cowboy. I didn’t “assert that [the Maunder Minimum] wasn’t [cold]”.
I said that YOUR CITED DATA said it wasn’t cold, which is a very different matter. I made no assertion myself either way.
This is why I ask people to quote my words …
w.

Don, Just sitting in the peanut gallery here, as an interested observer, reading some of these posts. Not only do we have fiddling of historic temperature anomalies, and from what I understand historic Sun Spot Numbers, I am getting the impression that not only do we have a “hide the decline”, but also a “hide the correlation”. We will never know.

Roads and LIA have a bias in the temperature record.
Firstly all thermometers are beside roads in spite of roads occupying well under 1% of the surface of the earth.
I might add that the correlation between roads and surface alteration of the ground around them is very strong also.
If you ask people about building more roads they often say we cant just keep building roads otherwise the world will be covered, ask them what proportion or percentage of their country is urbanized and roaded. Few realize its much closer to 1% than covered.
This I believe biases the measured climate as measured not sure if hotter but certainly different. that being day night etc.
The LIA bias comes in mind from the impact of a possible small number big peaks up or down. Aging memories remember big events, these are also recorded in paintings of ice covered lakes and floods. It is likely to be a cherry picked memory impact, that is anecdote. Youth think everything is the worst ever they suffer from Piaget’s ego centrism, but they grow out of it we hope.
This year has been very hot in NZ against a background of falling SH global temperatures and the frenzy in the press is that its proof of CAGW where as its actually proof of human stupidity.
If there is something to study its the frequency of blocking weather patterns which define freak weather patterns both hot cold wet and dry. These define the frenzied press.

@ Salvatore,
“… The combinations and hence resultant effects are endless and this is why it is so hard to obtain clear cut solar/climate correlations. …”
—
No, it’s because the variability of TSI is so incidental in quantity as to be almost but not quite amusingly insignificant.
You and others seem to be verging on saying induction heating of the oceans can explain the missing watts per meter squared of E input.
At least Stephen Wilde has a viable somewhat testable conceptual mechanism for solar modulation of weather, then on to longer term natural climate variability (as opposed to political IPCC “climate-change” propaganda terms).

“No, it’s because the variability of TSI is so incidental in quantity as to be almost but not quite amusingly insignificant.”
Wrong. TSI is cumulative like earning money, you either make enough and get ahead, or just stay afloat at breakeven, or you don’t and fall behind over time. Solar deposited energy in OHC is like your retained earnings after expenses, your savings. When earnings are low you draw off savings.
What is amusingly insignificant are the opinions of Stephen Wilde and Salvatore, who are two of the biggest hand-wavers around, who are always quick to take credit but with no supportive evidence.
When did Wilde or de Prete make a single successful prediction? What did they explain?“Wilde has a viable somewhat testable conceptual mechanism for solar modulation of weather, then on to longer term natural climate variability”
You realize Wilde has never posted a thing except his opinion. I don’t dislike him. Salvatore neither – but there’s no demonstrated skill there.
Those weren’t Wilde’s ideas in the first place, and he has done ZERO work to show anyone anything in all the years I’ve been here. I remember no evidence ever forwarded from him in realtime nor any specific falsifiable predictions. I asked him once to show data and he said nature was proving him right. Sure, OK.
You have to ask yourself why hasn’t someone else stepped up to help them and provide the evidence they need. They rely on the very thin ozone layer, so if you think a very thin passive low concentration gas in the atmosphere is more powerful than the sun’s variable energy, and that the solar wind or UV modulation can outperform and outwarm TSI, just show the evidence for how it caused anything to happen at all. You’d think by now if this was such an obviously dominate mechanism everyone would be showing evidence.
Even once would be a start. But that’s too much to ask of the handwaving crowd and their synchophants.
Everyone against TSI is not facing up to reality. It works incrementally on the ocean, which heats the air, as I showed in several prior posts. People must face up to the truth that just about everybody was wrong about TSI.. The solar wind does not warm the ocean. The solar wind did not cause climate change, TSI did.
WZcycles you could be the one to prove them right. Why don’t you?

Bob,
I’m observing the data, and the propositions of many. I don’t feel compelled to take sides, or pick a favorite, and I don’t think I need to have a working solution.
It would be nice, if progress were made, but given the time scale of climate variability, I realistically accept I will most probably not understand it much better before I keel-over, in ~20 years or so.
I’m more put off by deluding ideas being spread, and the seeing of imaginary patterns in processed data, and the avid assertions accompanying, than I am put off by an abscence of viable explanations for 100 to 1000 year time scale oscilations’, dips and peaks.
I see you’re working to build up a website, and will visit it when it goes up, to try and figure out why you feel you’ve found and defined the so far indefinite. Good luck to you.
I am far from impressed by the cycles pseudo-paradigm, in this post, and others along these lines, as I’ve seen it all before in other areas, so I’m more interested in the counterpointing views.
I mention Stephen Wilde as I think he took a sensible approach, no arm twisting, just keep it simple, state it logically, sit back and watch the WX cycle noise patterns develop, let it stand or fall on its approximation to observations. As for him not being 100% original, we all learn things from others before attempting to posit notions that testably approximate the observed data, more closely.
And your proposals would also nessesarily need to touch on or utilise some same concepts that he used to account for the natural variability patterns.
Although I seen no clear evidence of a solar driver the warming/cooling is still occurring, somehow, so ruling out the Sun as an indirect or lagged regulator seems an objectionable idea to me. Thus I remain interested. So I’ll enjoy seeing what you have to say, but I must admit I’m currently not clear what that is. So best of luck with your web effort.

The climate is a function of the relative strength of the solar magnetic field and geo magnetic field.
When these two fields move in tandem and compliment each other that is when the climate will respond in a more significant way.
This against the back drop of Milankovitch Cycles , land ocean arrangements, and the initial state of the climate, asteroid impacts, super nova in relative terms near by or far, at the time the weakening magnetic fields are taking place.
The combinations and hence resultant effects are endless and this is why it is so hard to obtain clear cut solar/climate correlations.
As I speak both the solar/geo magnetic fields continue to weaken and I think if this trend continues it is going to translate into climatic effects. This is why I have felt confident enough to call this year a transitional year when it comes to the climate meaning the relative warmth is not going to make any further progress on the upside and indeed global cooling should be the rule moving forward.
Only time will show but by time I mean now and over the coming several months to perhaps a year or two.
My climate prediction is not based on some way out future date which from my point of view is meaningless.

Salvatore
The climate is a function of the relative strength of the solar magnetic field and geo magnetic field.
When these two fields move in tandem and compliment each other that is when the climate will respond in a more significant way.
This against the back drop of Milankovitch Cycles , land ocean arrangements, and the initial state of the climate, asteroid impacts, super nova in relative terms near by or far, at the time the weakening magnetic fields are taking place.
The combinations and hence resultant effects are endless and this is why it is so hard to obtain clear cut solar/climate correlations.
How can you continually assert the first sentence so confidently then go and write the last?

“Whoa there, cowboy. I didn’t “assert that [the Maunder Minimum] wasn’t [cold]”.
I said that YOUR CITED DATA said it wasn’t cold, which is a very different matter. I made no assertion myself either way. This is why I ask people to quote my words” …
OK–here is what you said: “this does NOT show the Maunder Minimum as being unusual in any way. In fact, three of the four “grand sunspot minima”, including the Maunder Minimum, were warmer than the overall average”
“warmer than the overall average” seems to me to be an assertion that the Maunder wasn’t cold. I’m not interested in arguing with you–I just want to clear up the discrepancy
between your plot of standard deviation and my plots of delta 18O. They seem to be quite different. It isn’t clear to me why you plot standard deviation instead of delta 18O. What do you get from the dataset if you plot delta 18O? Is it identical to your plot of standard deviation? If we can look at the same data, hopefully we can agree on whatever it tells us.
Don

Thanks, Don. As you point out, I said “THIS (meaning the dataset you recommended) does not show, etc.”
I did NOT say “I believe” or “I think” or “I assert” in that statement about the Maunder Minimum. I said your recommended dataset does not show it.
Now, I can post the same plot in d18O, but all that does is change the units. The rest is identical. I put it in standard deviations so that I can see how unusual in standard deviations the results are, and which direction the averages are regarding the mean of the dataset. But hang on … OK, ten minutes elapsed, kicked R into gear, took out the standardization of the data, here’s your new graph, same as the old one …https://i1.wp.com/wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2018/04/gisp2-1-year-ice-core-and-sunspot-minima-per-mil.png
As I mentioned above, in native units (per mil) it’s harder to tell if the averages are above or below the mean, and how significant that difference might be … which is why I standardized it.
But as you can see, it’s the same thing no matter which units you use …
In friendship,
w.

Thanks, Willis. I appreciate your taking the time to make the new plot. So, looks like I need to take a look at my end and see what I can figure out. I use much shorter time intervals to see greater detail, but the plots should be the essentially the same. With your new plot, I can now compare values directly. I’ll let you know what I find out.
With best regards,
Don

Leif,
“Nobody is disputing that the Maunder was cold”
Yes! Now that we agree that the Maunder was cold, we can move on to the interesting question of why. I’d love to discuss this with you (and perhaps Willis).
Don

Now that we agree that the Maunder was cold, we can move on to the interesting question of why.
You miss the point that the Maunder was not any different from many other intervals during the LIA, so a special explanation of why the Maunder was cold is not of interest. The interesting question is why the LIA was cold:http://www.leif.org/research/Solar-Activity-and-Temps.png

Yes, I totally agree! The correlations you show (and several others) are truly remarkable.

Except there are no correlations.
What is truly remarkable is some people’s total disregard of the facts.

You beat me to it, Leif. The TSI is at its lowest in about the year 600 and rises from there to about 1300. But the temperature started rising about the year 250 or so, rises until about 900, and starts dropping.
Then the TSI bottoms out around 1450 and starts rising again, but the temperature drops until about 1700.
No correlations …
w.

Lief? Stop beating that dead horse, it is just covering you in bloody bits of dead horse. This guy just keeps twirling round in circles with no apparent desire to actually get anywhere.

Are you talking TO Leif, or ABOUT Leif, or TO Leif ABOUT someone else? Who is beating the dead horse? Who is twirling round in circles?
You’ve descended into total incoherence, hotel. This is why I ask people to QUOTE THE EXACT WORDS YOU ARE DISCUSSING, so that we can understand both who you are talking to and what you are talking about.
w.

Thank, Leif. I had no clue what he was saying. Still don’t for that matter.
On another subject, about the reconstructions above, do you have a link to the data for whatever you consider the best ∂14C reconstruction?
w.

There is no generally agreed upon ‘best’ TSI reconstruction. They all have problems, and the experimenters are loath to [admist and] fix the flaws. I discuss some of those in http://www.leif.org/research/EUV-F107-and-TSI-CDR-HAO.pdf Slide 48 ff. My own assessment [FWIIW] is that TSI can be calculated from the Sunspot Number SN version 2 and the Group Number GN (Svalgaard & Schatten) as follows:
TSI = 1360.5 + (0.0304 SN^0.7 + 0.239 GN^0.7)/2

Bob I will say this which is you ,Javier and myself are on the correct path even though we all differ to some degree.
I hope these next few yeas will yield more clues. I think there is a good chance they will .

“Lief? Stop beating that dead horse, it is just covering you in bloody bits of dead horse. This guy just keeps twirling round in circles with no apparent desire to actually get anywhere.”
“From the context I gather that ‘this guy’ is Don…”
Leif–are you saying that I “just keep twirling round in circles with no apparent desire to actually get anywhere.” That’s really a dirty thing to say–such smut is not worthy of an intellectually honest scientist. You should rise above such smut. I back everything I say with data and try to get to the truth.

Leif–are you saying that I “just keep twirling round in circles with no apparent desire to actually get anywhere.
It would help if you took the trouble to see who said that, instead of just shooting your mouth off like this.

Sorry to leave this hanging for a week, my computer died. No, Leif did not, I did. On one hand you tell him he is correct and then go on, at length, explaining how he is wrong. Circular. Not sure why, going back through this thread it is what I see. Just gave Leif a friendly advisory, you are the one getting all offended and nasty.

What is your theory on why Ice Ages have come and gone?
I do not think you have ever gave your theory on this subject.

I wrote a couple of posts on this a while back. Basically, I think the Milankovich theory of orbital variations is correct. But there are two problems.
First, we do get swings in the NH insolation, but they are only 21,000 years apart, and the ice ages are about 100,000 years apart. So … why don’t we get ice ages every 21,000 years? Nobody knows. It’s called the hundred thousand year problem. To illustrate it, here are the changes in northern NH insolation, along with the ice ages per the ice cores:https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/insolation-at-40n-and-epica.jpg
Look for example at the ice age that started about 400,000 years ago … why there? I mean, we’ve had many, many swings in insolation greater than that … why not then?
Second, once we’ve gone into the ice ages, what brings us out? The best hypothesis I’ve read on this question says that it’s the gradual buildup of dust on the surface of the ice, reducing the albedo and driving the glaciers back into their ice caves. But that still doesn’t solve the hundred thousand year problem.
So I think the real answer is, we have tenable hypotheses, but no certainty.
Best regards,
w.
My posts on the subject:Into and Out of the Icebox 2015-01-23
Inspired by a random comment by Steve McIntyre over at his marvelous blog Climate Audit, I got to thinking about the ice ages. I’ve long heard that the ice ages are caused by the changes in summer insolation in the northern hemisphere. As the story goes, the Milankovitch cycles of…The Icebox Heats Up 2015-01-24
Well, either it’s a genetic defect or I’m just a glutton for punishment, but I’m going to delve some more into the ice ages. This is a followup to my previous post, Into and Out Of The Icebox. Let me start by looking at the cycles in the insolation and…

Willis Eschenbach May 2, 2018 at 2:46 pm
Forty degrees latitude is way too far south to be meaningful. Please check out insolation at 70 degrees N, where the Laurentide Ice Sheet forms on Baffin Island.
The whole axial tilt cycle is 41,000 years, and, sure enough, for the first half (or so) of the Pleistocene, glacial cycles were indeed of that length. The thing is, that after the mid-Pleistocene switch to longer glacial cycle, the “obliquity” cycle still dominates. But now you get two or three such cycles in a row, with aborted interglacials between them. Glacial phases of 82K and 123K average out to ~100K years.
Some advocates of man-made climate change argue that CO2 caused the transition from single tilt cycle glaciations to longer such phases. But IMO, it was just because the world got progressively colder, such that what would have been weak, short interglacials simply became interstadials of a continuing glacial phase.
Besides just time spent in a glacial epoch, the world cooled also because of topographic, geographical and geological changes, leading to meteorological and oceanographic changes that enhanced cooling. More extensive, longer lasting ice sheets encouraged their growth and stability, from greater albedo.
From ETH Zurich (Einstein’s alma mater), 2013:
Why an ice age occurs every 100,000 years: Climate and feedback effects explainedhttps://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/08/130807134127.htm
“Science has struggled to explain fully why an ice age occurs every 100,000 years. As researchers now demonstrate based on a computer simulation, not only do variations in insolation play a key role, but also the mutual influence of glaciated continents and climate.”
Unlike GCMs, more geographically restricted meteorological, atmospheric circulation models do a good job of simulating past and present climates, validated by data. For one thing, they try to find out the truth, not reach foregone conclusions.

Willis Eschenbach May 2, 2018 at 2:46 pm
Forty degrees latitude is way too far south to be meaningful. Please check out insolation at 70 degrees N, where the Laurentide Ice Sheet forms on Baffin Island.

Not true. All that changes as you go further north is that the AMPLITUDE of the cycles increases. However, the TIMING of the cycles is identical, and that’s what we were discussing. Take a look at my second link, where I used 60° north … it makes no difference.
w.

Unlike GCMs, more geographically restricted meteorological, atmospheric circulation models do a good job of simulating past and present climates, validated by data. For one thing, they try to find out the truth, not reach foregone conclusions.

Any model trying to explain the ice ages is definitely trying to reach a foregone conclusion, the ice ages. If it doesn’t explain them, the researchers will change parameters over and over until they do reach the foregone conclusion … and you believe them?
I’ve been programming computers, not using them but programming them, for 55 years now. Believe them at your own risk.
And no, this was not a limited model, nor was it “unlike” a GCM. It was a GCM plus another model, so you have a notoriously incorrect and unreliable GCM plus more chances for error from the second model, plus unknown effects from the combination … from your link:

The researchers obtained their results from a comprehensive computer model, where they combined an ice-sheet simulation with an existing climate model, which enabled them to calculate the glaciation of the northern hemisphere for the last 400,000 years.

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